Sciencemadness Discussion Board

DIY portable HPLC

Mildronate - 17-10-2013 at 03:39

Anyone think about homemade hplc? Maybe somebody made?

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bfesser - 17-10-2013 at 08:25

I'm impressed that the pumping system achieved ~1 MPa! I had no idea that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroosmotic_pump" target="_blank">electroosmotic pumps</a> <img src="../scipics/_wiki.png" /> were even a thing. This sounds like it'd be an interesting avenue of amateur experimentation. Thanks for sharing.

smaerd - 17-10-2013 at 14:24

I've been thinking about it for a little bit now. I like the idea, I just wish it wasn't lab on a chip scale. Lab on a chip makes things like this so close to possible at home but still just a little out of reach.

Some relevant web-pages for that technology being DIYized

http://wetpong.net/wetpong/?page_id=115

There is more good content about things like this on the web-page with a bit of searching.

Mildronate - 18-10-2013 at 02:58

To my mind the bigest problem is pumping, column can be comercial and detector electrochemical or uv or even PDA made from webcamera. Of course working isocratic.

sonogashira - 18-10-2013 at 08:50

There's some good information on pump designs here, if you're interested:
http://www.chromatography-online.org/HPLC/Basic-HPLC/Pump/rs...

Mildronate - 22-10-2013 at 08:00

Actually its possible to use litography for detector making ( of course not in nano scale), you can etching glass with HF with photoresist mask (used for pcb making).
Also this electroosmosis pumps loking very promising.

[Edited on 22-10-2013 by Mildronate]

jwpa17 - 28-10-2013 at 19:08

FWIW
Seems to me capillary electrophoresis is more amenable to home laboratories than HPLC. I've used HPLC routinely for nearly forty years - and dust is a big issue for HPLC. There's a paper in J Chem Ed describing an inexpensive capillary electrophoresis system with fluorescence detection from a couple of years ago.
The lab on a chip design would still be susceptible to dust - perhaps moreso than conventional HPLC. However, the design described looks pretty robust - and it seems to me that the individual components can be replaced pretty easily and inexpensively - a real advantage for a home lab, IMO.