What Ferrule Material and ID Can I Use in my GC?
Description
As is typical for scientific instrumentation, gas chromatographs require upkeep and maintenance. You need to have the right tools and supplies on hand to keep your instrument running its best. Because GCs use pressurized gas, good connections are paramount, and selecting the right ferrules for column installation is important. Get the run down on choices and decision factors in this video.
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Transcript
Hello, chromatographers. Welcome to another Restek Tip. Today, we’re going to be discussing how to choose the right ferrule for my GC column installation. And there are really three questions that we need to ask. The first of those is, what ferrule geometry do I need? The best source of information for that is our instrument manual. That is going to give us the specific geometry that that particular instrument uses for its connections. Now, keep in mind, though, even within a single instrument, it could use different ferrule geometries for different connections.
The next question we need to answer is: What should my ferrule material be? Principally, there are three main choices – graphite, Vespel/graphite, or pure Vespel. And essentially to answer that question, we just need to know one thing – am I making a connection to a mass spec? If so, I want to choose a Vespel or a /Vespel graphite ferrule. Otherwise, any of those ferrule materials should be fine for us. The final thing we need to identify what is the correct ferrule ID to choose. In this case, we ideally would know our column OD, but usually we don’t see that around. We know our column ID.
You could try to go find what your column OD is, but ultimately what you really need to know is just this – for a 0.25-millimeter ID column, you want a 0.4-millimeter ID ferrule. For a 0.32-millimeter ID column, you want a 0.5-millimeter ID ferrule. And finally, for a 0.53-millimeter ID column, you want a 0.8-millimeter ID ferrule. And that’s it. That’s what you need to know about your GC column ferrules.
Thanks very much for joining us for this Restek Tip.