Dear ABRFers:
Following up on Kerry's message I add my five cents. As I do not know who's
system Gordon Alton is talking about -- I have pretty much a free mind and
can focus on the issues.
Somehow I have a feeling that microbore HPLC is a little bit maligned by
this discussion.
What happened in Gordon's lab is a freak accident but it would have been
preventable. But this is always easy to say after and doesn't change
anything. One impression that I get from this discussion is that microbore
might involve higher pressures and hence might be more dangerous. Actually
it does not: due to the reduced flow rates the pressure per square mm is
pretty similar to conventional HPLC. Yes, that means that this danger is
also present in conventional bore HPLC.
When working with HPLC one has to consider the pressures involved and apply
the necessary care. Period.
I'm sure that quite a few among you have seen Arthur Moseley's presentation
at ASMS 99 where he was using UHPLC -- standing for Ultra High Pressure LC
with non-porous particles -- where one runs at pressures of 16,000 to 20,000
PSI across the columns for separations and packs columns at 60,000 PSI! Jim
Jorgenson at UNC has a pump that goes up to over 110,000 PSI for this
purpose.... Would you want to have this equipment in your lab?
To sum up: for all HPLC work, take the usual precautions, wear eye
protection and think safe and act safe.
Best regards: Jean-Pierre
----------------------------------------------------
Jean-Pierre Salzmann
LC PACKINGS (USA) INC
80 Carolina Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Phone 415-552-1855
Fax 415-552-1859
e-mail jps@lcpackingsusa.com
www.lcpackings.com
----------------------------------------------------
> From: Michrom <michrom_rnd@psyber.com>
> Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 11:03:41 -0700
> To: Recipients of ABRF List <abrf@aecom.yu.edu>
> Subject: Re: MICROBORE DANGER
>
>
> On 9/8/00, Gordon Alton of Signal Pharmaceuticals wrote about an accident
> that happened during the installation of a microbore HPLC system when using
> fused silica tubing shrouded with PEEK for a high pressure line.
>
> As a vendor who has sold microbore, capillary and nanoscale HPLC systems
> for the past 12 years, I can say that we have never experienced a problem
> like this because we would never use PEEK shrouded fused silica for a high
> pressure line. We have 1/16" OD PEEK tubing with IDs down to 75 micron,
> which works well for flow rates down to 20 ul/min (microbore flows usually
> 20-200 ul/min) and we use 50 and 25 micron ID by 1/16" OD PEEKSIL tubing
> (fused silica tubing that's coated with aluminum and then coated with PEEK
> to make one solid tube) for capillary (flows from 2 - 20 ul/min) and
> nanoscale (flows from 0.1 - 1 ul/min) HPLC and LC/MS applications.
>
> Using these tubes in a well configured, low volume HPLC system allows the
> user to work with simple, standard 1/16" 10-32 fittings while still keeping
> gradient delay times of 1-3 minutes (even at flows as low as 100 nl/min).
> I agree with Gordon that safety is of paramount concern when working with
> any high pressure LC system, and users should be cautious when working with
> vendors who are new to nano/capillary/microbore HPLC or when trying to
> convert analytical HPLC systems to these lower flow applications.
>
> Kerry D. Nugent
> President
> Michrom BioResources, Inc.
> 1945 Industrial Drive
> Auburn, CA 95603
> Phone: (530) 888-6498
> FAX: (530) 888-8295
> Email: michromintl@psyber.com
> WWW: http://www.michrom.com
>
>
>
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