Is 5,000 considered a good number of injections for urine drug screen testing on an ACQUITY BEH C18 column before needing to replace the column? - WKB123683

ENVIRONMENT

• Column longevity
• Bridged ethylene hybrid (BEH)
• ACQUITY BEH C18
• Urine drug screening

ANSWER

Yes.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Achieving 5,000 injections for urine drug screening on a column before needing to replace it due to peak shape problems, loss of resolution, or other issues is a GREAT number of injections.

Assuring a system is free of microbial contamination, along with use of a pre-column filter or VanGuard Pre-column, may help to extend column lifetimes up to and potentially above this number of injections. It is all based on sample cleanliness, the type of sample pretreatment (SPE vs. filtration only). The longest column lifetimes would be expected when SPE (solid-phase extraction) is used to clean up sample matrices and a VanGuard pre-column is used and replaced as needed. Use of a an in-line pre-column filter in place of a VanGuard pre-column can help, but a VanGuard pre-column would provide even better column protection.