Saline / Salt color scrub SOP

cyclopath · March 13, 2022, 9:43pm

there are tools for that… see Tricks of the trade (lots of gems in there…)

A vibrator is pretty useful in the lab. I suggest a unit designed for hand held massage but if in doubt about which model to select just ask the clerk in the adults only shop which model they prefer…

For instance when packing a column with silica gel, instead of banging a cork ring around the top of the sep funnel to help pack the column I can hold the vibrator against the funnel or the stand and get the whole mass of dry gell churning around a bit from vibration. Then hit the vacuum and that column will pack down MUCH better than any other method of packing I have tried. The vibration allows the gel beads to orient themselves duirng the brief packing interval and it takes just a second.

Another use for the massage wand is during seperatory funnel seperations. My process does not use saline. I skip that procedure in favor of other techniques that accomplish more or less the same thing. However when miixng water into hexane as I do with LLE the water can and will bead up on the glass surface of the funnel. Funnels are hard to clean and this makes it worse if the funnel is a bit filthy lolz. The massage wand held against the clamp stand will vibrate those water pockets down off the sides of the glass so they can fall to the bottom. It is a cleaner seperation but admittedly this is a nit picky sort of thing but nit picky is not altogether bad.