Fused silica capillary columns-restoration of chromatographic efficiency for long chain alcohols

✍ Scribed by Schwarz, Meyer ;Klun, J. A.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1982
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 137 KB
• Volume: 5
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0935-6304
• DOI: 10.1002/jhrc.1240050711

✦ Synopsis

Gas chromatography Capillary, fused silica Thermal aging, and regeneration of fused silica capillaries

Inarecentcommunication,Moncur[11 commentedon the effects of thermal aging on the chromatographic efficiency of fused silica capillary columns. On columns that have aged, aliphatic alcohols, and presumably other very polar compounds, show severe tailing and, in our experience, become well-nigh undetectable in extreme cases. As a solution to this problem, Moncur 111 reported that column deactivation and restoration of initial column performance may be achieved by injection of propylene glycol and subsequent overnight conditioning at 250OC.

We report a more convenient and rapid procedure that also will restore column efficiency. We simply inject H20 repetitively (3 injections of 5 pI H20 each) onto the column. As each injection is made (in the splitless mode), the column is subjected to the temperature program that is used forthe analysis to be performed and is briefly held at the final program temperature until the baseline is restored. After this treatment, the column is ready for use without any further conditioning. Figure 1 shows the results achieved with a mixture of long chain alcohols and acetates. The