HPLC Tubing and Fittings: A Comprehensive Guide 🧪

Greetings, laboratory professionals! Today, we delve into the world of High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) tubing and fittings. This guide will provide you with a step-by-step walkthrough, ensuring you have a thorough understanding of the process. Let's begin.

Understanding HPLC Tubing and Fittings 🧪

When you generally buy an HPLC or get tubing that comes with the instruments, most instruments, especially standard HPLCs, come with stainless steel tubing. It's rigid and hard to work with, making it difficult to manipulate.

The Traditional Stainless Steel Tubing 🧪

The traditional stainless steel tubing is rigid and hard to manipulate. It comes with fittings and barrels that come separately. These are hard to work with, and you always lose the small parts. However, they are more commonly used because they can withstand higher pressure.

The Finger Tight Fitting 🧪

A finger tight fitting is nicer. You put it over a tubing and it only needs to be finger tight. The drawback of using this type of finger tight fitting is that it's only pressure stable up to around 3,000 and 3,500 psi. So if you get any high pressure, it's going to leak.

The Optimized Finger Tight Fitting 🧪

There are finger tight fittings now that are great for UHPLC. One such fitting is by Optimized. What's nice about this one is that it's reusable, you can take it on and off, and it's one piece. It's considered semi finger tight because you still need a tool to tighten it.

The Flexible Stainless Steel Tubing 🧪

There's some tubing called flexible stainless steel which is really nice. It comes where the tubing and the fittings come in a set. This is finger tight and goes straight into the column or fitting and it's a zero dead volume. The way that it works is you can move the tubing in and out. There are no nuts or anything like that and these are very nice because it's considered flexible stainless steel.

The Analytical Sales Flexible Stainless Steel Tubing 🧪

There's a different style by Analytical Sales. This is also flexible stainless steel. These are also finger tight UHPLC fittings. It does have the ferrule that's separate and then you can manipulate the depths with this guy. You can take these on and off.

And that's it, laboratory professionals! You're now equipped with the knowledge of HPLC tubing and fittings. For a visual guide, don't forget to check out our video tutorial. Until next time, stay precise and efficient in your lab work! 🌿