Oil fumes sucked back into MS

[syfir]

I was ballasting the pump when the lab lost power. I heard air being sucked into the rough pump through the ballast. The MS lost vacuum, so I opened it up to check it out and it was billowing oil fumes. Any advice on how to clean this up? The MS is an Agilent 5973.

[Schmitty]

Lots and lots of methylene chloride and sonication.

[sassman]

I'm sorry for you man. That is every mass spec operators worst nightmare. If you mix some hexane with the methylene chloride it might clean up the oil more easily. Just make sure you put everything back together the same way you took it apart.

[AICMM]

syfir,

At one point, Agilent had a procedure for dunking the quads in solvent to wash them off. It is certainly worth giving them a call to see what you can and cannot dip straight into solvent to rinse off.

Best of luck.

[syfir]

We actually got this thing back up and running, I can't believe it. The source was cleaned and sonicated, the walls of the MS were scrubbed with EtOH than methylene chloride, the quads were not taken apart(strongly cautioned by Agilent not to do so)but were cleaned up as best I could with methylene chloride, the horn, the HED and the vent going into to the diffusion pump were cleaned with cotton swabs and voila! It took a little longer to pump down than normal, but the next morning it tuned and ran fine.

[sindhu]

Probably you can clean with n-Hexane and I am sure it will give you good results