Preventing clogs

Hello faraday,

I would monitor my pressure daily or more often if I am concern it can clog the system. That way if I start seeing the pressure go up, then I know something might be clogging and I need to be concerned.

I would also be more precautious and probably would run water flush through the system at the end of a day. So if I make a long sequence at the beginning of the day, I would make sure that at the end of the day , I flush with water to not let buffer in my system for too long. 

Also before using anything as a mobile phase, if you are going to mix your mobile phase with another solvent such as ACN or MeOH, I would fill a beaker with my solvent composition to be sure that salt does not precipitate out immediately. Ex: if I am to go 50% buffer and 50% ACN. I would fill a beaker with 50%buffer and 50% ACN and see if it mixes well and if salt precipitates out quickly or not. if you are using 100% buffer, just make sure salt does not precipitate out too easily and refer to my other 2 suggestions.

Thank you for the response,

We recently had to have the needle and chamber replaced because of salt clogs. There were salt crystals found around them. Any suggestions for preventing this from happening? We were going to change our sequence to have a run where water is pulled into the needle larger than sample volume, and do that a few times.

Thank you.

Sounds like you might have had small leaks during your runs so buffer leaked out and eventually liquid evaporate and only the salts were left. I would make sure i have no leaks and clean the system with water regularly. You might have had a partial clog at some point and it forced liquid out.