Is it really good to run naked on the HPLC column?

When buying chromatographic column, few people pay attention to the protective column of liquid chromatography column.
In many users' liquid chromatographs, we can see that most of the chromatographic columns are running naked.
The reasons are as follows,
On the one hand, everyone thinks that I just use a chromatographic column. What's the use of protecting the column? The concept of protection column, pre column and on-line filter is not clear.
On the other hand, the imported chromatographic column manufacturer's corresponding protective column is expensive, which makes everyone flinch.
A set of protective column is composed of ferrule, column core and connector, and the price is often thousands of yuan, which is equivalent to the price of chromatographic column.
This is the protection column of conventional liquid chromatography column. In addition, there are direct connected protection column of small particle size chromatographic column such as UPLC / UHPLC. It is special and generally purchased from the original factory.
In order to reduce the dead volume outside the column as much as possible, this kind of column adopts the direct connection between the protective column and the chromatographic column. The size of the interface may not be suitable for domestic or other brands, and the price of this kind of protective column is often more expensive.
Directly connected protective column
In fact, whether the liquid chromatography column runs naked or not depends on the situation.
The sample matrix of some customers is very clean. For example, for some chemical drug analysis, the effect of the protective column is not very obvious. At this time, the bare running chromatographic column looks very good and saves money.
However, for the analysis of traditional Chinese medicine, mobile phase containing buffer salt and sample matrix such as capsules and tablets, the protective column is more effective.
Because the sample matrix of capsules and tablets contains starch, salts, sugars and other substances, the sample pretreatment of drug analysis mostly does not adopt SPE pretreatment and other measures for pesticide residue analysis. The substances of these sample matrix often enter the chromatographic column, which is also some users with large sample volume. After several batches of sample analysis, the column efficiency will be large The column was even scrapped.
Therefore, when the sample matrix is complex, the mobile phase contains buffer salt and traditional Chinese medicine drug analysis, it is necessary to add a liquid chromatography column protection column in the front of the column, and change the column core regularly.
Liquid chromatography column protection column domestic is very cheap, a set of several hundred yuan, for the conventional liquid chromatography column, can greatly improve its chromatographic column life in the analysis of complex samples!
It is also very simple to use and can completely replace imported products.
To sum up, the naked running of liquid chromatography column is very dangerous and expensive in the analysis of some samples.
Attachment: instructions for use of protective column of liquid chromatography column
The protective column ferrule and the protective column core have no direction when they are used for the first time.
The direction after the first use is the later use direction and cannot be reversed.
When the new protective column core is used for the first time, it should be balanced with 0.2ml/min methanol solution for about 30min, and then connected to the HPLC column for use.

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