Vaplock Vapor Trap Kit
Customer’s often ask "what to do with the condensate and spill tray lines that run from an HPLC to waste?"
These lines exit at the bottom of the system and are most noticeable on Waters and Agilent machines; they are usually 1/4" inner diameter; on Agilent systems the tubing is often corrugated. We’ve seen up to four of these on a single Waters instrument. This example included a line from the spill tray, a condensate line from the auto sampler (with refrigeration unit), another drip tray line from the column heater, plus a line from the detector drip tray. These lines all drain by gravity flow and should be plumbed to waste as nearly vertical as possible.
When a customer’s goal is to convert their HPLC to a truly "closed system" using Vaplock products, the problem we face is that the customer may want all waste lines -- solvent and spill/ condensate -- to run to the same manifold on their waste container. Because the spill trays on the HPLC are all open to air and rarely contain waste fluids, they represent open pathways for venting straight from the waste can to the lab. This is a problem if they intend to use the Vaplock EF-100 carbon filters to capture vapors that exit from waste.
Our solution is a low-pressure check valve installed at the manifold level. The check valve is Polypropylene and Viton, and cracks at a low 0.07 psi (less than an inch of water in a 1/2" ID tube). Part number VT-100 includes components to securely plumb spill tray lines from typical HPLC systems.
