Transitioning from Packed to Capillary Column (GC 7890B)

Does anyone have experience transitioning column types from packed to capillary on the GC? Our current inlet is purged packed and solvents are polar, so inlet volume is a concern. Any tips or recommendations on how best to handle this type of transition would be very appreciated. Thanks!  

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  • There are big difference..

    Major is packed column use high flow like 10/15/30ml while capillary column used to maximum 5ml of flow generally.

    Configuration is totally different..

    By the way, why u want to change it...Any specific application requirement?

  • Find above detail of all type agilent inlets and there use and differences...

  • Which packed column and detector are you using?  What volume are you injecting? What detection limit do you need?

  • Thanks all for the engagement! We are currently using a custom glass column. Detector is NPD. We inject 1 mL with our lowest detection limit being 0.002 mg/mL. Do you have any suggestions for trial parameters with the purged packed inlet and HP-5 capillary column? (HP-5: 30m x 0.32mm 0.25 micron) 

  • Hello Devon, These are good questions and you may have to experiment some to find out what detection limit you can achieve with different hardware configurations.  If you are using a packed column I would think about going to a bigger I.D. column like an HP-5, 30 m x 0.53 mm x 0.88 um, PN 19095J-023.  The 0.53 mm I.D. column will give you more capacity than the 0.32 mm column and will be able to handle larger injection volumes.  If you decide to go to a capillary column I recommend moving to a split/splitless inlet. This will give you complete control over the amount you inject on column.  Each liner has a different capacity as well.  So go to the Agilent GC Calculators page and download our GC calculators.  The vapor volume calculator will allow you to calculate the vapor volume of your solvent and will allow you to calculate the max liquid inject volume for the inlet liner you are using.  That should give you a good start and give you the tools to figure out how much you can inject.  Your peaks will be sharper with capillary columns so you will gain some peak height and sensitivity.  You will have to experiment to determine what your method detection limits will be.

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