Priming The Seal Wash - Waters nanoACQUITY UPLC Quick Start Manual

Requirements:
• To maintain the efficiency of the auxiliary solvent manager, and to
obtain accurate, reproducible chromatograms, use only HPLC-grade (or
higher) quality solvents, water, and additives. For details, see the
nanoACQUITY UPLC System Operator's Guide.
• Solvent A must be aqueous and solvent B must be organic (acetonitrile
or methanol). The flow control module supports only the solvents shown
in the Solvent drop-down list of the solvent manager's instrument
method dialog box.
• The nanoACQUITY UPLC System should not be run with high pH
mobile phases. Alkaline solutions such as ammonium hydroxide (pH 10)
can etch glass solvent bottles and the silica capillary tubing, resulting in
an elevated chemical background being detected by mass spectrometry.
For high sensitivity applications, Waters recommends MS-grade eluents. In
our laboratories, Waters has had success with Baker water and Fisher
Optima™ acetonitrile. It is important to flush the system with the appropriate
solvents before passing eluent into the column, optical detector, and/or mass
spectrometer.
Your system is configured with the degassers removed from the fluidic
pathway (bypassed). Only the weak and strong wash solvents are degassed.

Priming the seal wash

Prime the seal wash in the auxiliary solvent manager to lubricate the
plungers and flush away solvent and/or any precipitated salts that have
seeped past the plunger seals from the high-pressure side of the piston
chambers.
Prime the plunger seal wash under these conditions:
• After using buffered mobile phase
• When the solvent manager has been inactive for a few hours or longer
• When the solvent manager is dry
• When troubleshooting a low-pressure error
Caution:
To avoid damage to the solenoid valve seats and seals in the solvent
path, do not use a nonvolatile buffer as the weak wash or strong wash solvent.
Rule:
To prevent contamination, do not recycle seal wash.
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