Ah, the adventures of being a new NMR "manager" at a small liberal arts
college! We have just discovered that several parts of the science building
have been coated in iron dust and small filings, due to a bearing that
catastrophically failed in an air handling system about 4 weeks ago.
There is dust on and around the NMR (300MHz Bruker Avance) magnet and
console. Our instrument is serviced by MR Resources, and they'll be out
next week to help us fully ascertain the situation. Thank heavens we were
already scheduled for a helium fill.
Our Varian EM360 with the Anasazi FT console seems to be fine. There is no
iron dust in that part of the building, on or near the instrument, console
or computer.
My question is the NMR tubes. Most of our clean tubes are in beakers, open
side down on benchtops in the organic labs. Many of those labs took a
direct hit with the iron. The last thing I want to do once this cleaned up
is over with is run the risk of putting iron dust back in to the magnets. I
was considering giving all our tubes a good wash with nitric acid, water and
acetone, then calling it good. But I'm wondering if we'd just be better off
trashing the whole lot and starting over.
Because we work with undergrads, we use the Wilmad Economy tubes in the 60
and the 300. For research purposes, we have some high field tubes.
Thoughts???
Janet Asper
University of Mary Washington
Received on Thu Nov 04 2010 - 06:49:12 MST