February 11, 2021Jack Silver, Applications Specialist
Solid sample loading is a great way to perform more efficient and consistent flash chromatography. With solid loading you can eliminate the effects of injection volume and solvent on your chromatography. Teledyne ISCO solid sample load cartridges are designed to take advantage of this technique, as outlined in several application notes on the subject [1], and in our how-to video series [2]. Solid sample loading however does require the extra step of either adsorbing your compound to the silica before loading the cartridge, or applying it to a prepacked solid-load cartridge and allowing it to dry to evaporate the solvent.
That’s easy enough, but here’s a neat trick to make solid sample loading even easier!
When adsorbing a compound onto the silica, during solvent evaporation on the RotoVap, a common problem is silica bumping into the bump trap creating a potential loss of sample and the hassle of recovering the silica from the bump trap. A cool little trick to avoid all that trouble is to use the frit that comes with the 5-g solid load cartridge in the bump trap joint to confine the silica to your round-bottom flask during evaporation. These frits can be purchased independently [3], and they are also included with our 5-g empty solid load cartridge caps [4].
Advantages of using frits to contain the silica:
Check out this video [5] to see how to use the frit to fit your bump trap and then use it on the solid load cartridge (if using the 5 gram size).
Let us know what you think and as always we would love to hear back about any other tips or tricks you are using for loading solid samples.
About Teledyne ISCO - Chromatography
The Teledyne ISCO Chromatography product line includes instruments and accessories for the purification of organic compounds in normal-phase and reversed-phase separations, and for bio-purification of proteins, peptides, and other biopolymers. For more articles from Teledyne ISCO, please visit our blog.
Comments
M.L. - 3/11/2021: "Clever! In the past I used bump traps made by chem glass that tapered down to the joint and that kept most things moving back toward the pear or round flask. But, the frit makes a lot of sense and I see that you use it to keep the silica in place in your loader device. Smart!"
