ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the key items of preventive maintenance and troubleshooting liquid chromatography (LC) instrumentation. Mobile phase reagents of the best quality that can be obtained should be used for the LC separation of biopolymers. The most common problem associated with mobile-phase reservoirs is contamination of the rest of the system by particulates from the mobile phase or as a result of microbial growth in the mobile phase. Filter mobile phase through a 0.5 μm membrane filter before it is added to the reservoir. When proteins and peptides are being separated, microbial growth in the mobile phase reservoir is common, because the mobile phase is often a good microbial growth medium. Inlet-Line Filters is not a substitute for mobile-phase filtration, but rather an added precaution to keep dust and other inadvertent contaminants from reaching the pump. Air bubbles in the pump head are the most common problem with LC operation.
