Replacing Your GC Split Vent Trap

Description 

Safety in the lab is everyone’s top priority, and this video focuses on some safety related maintenance for your gas chromatograph. Split vents are found on nearly all GCs and vent some of the sample that is injected into the inlet. In order to keep our lab air clean, we should regularly replace the split vent traps. These are traps that are designed to catch material and prevent it from making its way in to our lab air. We’ll show you how to perform this straightforward maintenance task.

Additional Resources

• It’s All in the Split Vent Trap

Restek Recommended Tools & Parts

• Replacement Chemical Trap

Transcript

Hi and welcome to this Restek Tip where we will be talking about split vent traps. In gas chromatography, often times the instruments can operate in split mode where your sample is just simply split. Some of it being directed onto the column for analysis but most of it being sent out of the instrument. But not just into the lab's atmosphere because instrument manufacturers have included something called the split vent trap. It's generally a small charcoal trap meant to scrub the contaminants out of that gas stream. Now, you may not have ever seen your split vent trap because usually they are lurking somewhere underneath a panel or on the back of your instrument but if you're unfamiliar with where it's located on your instrument, we recommend going to your instrument manufacturer's manual and finding it because you'll need to replace these every now and then. Now, when you do replace them, please make sure that all of the fittings are nice and snug because a leak at a split vent trap can be really hard to diagnose later on. So, if replacing the split vent trap isn't already on your preventative maintenance schedule, we hope you'll consider adding it. And we thank you for joining us for this Restek Tip!