Does anyone have any experience to use ion exchanger column for LC/MS work? Since ion exchange HPLC usually uses high percentage of water and high concentration of ion-pair reagent like surfactant or salt, and it is not favorable for MS work. How can we avoid these problems and get the work well done? Thanks for the help.

Stay with low-capacity columns and volatile buffers/salts (e.g., ammonium acetate). In this respect, ion exchange may be a better choice than ion-pair (no ion-pair reagent).

Just switch an ion exchanger between the analytical column and the MS interface. E. g. a cation exchanger removes alkali ions from the eluent stream (I used a sodium carbonate/hydrogencarbonate buffer, it worked fine.), they are exchanged against protons.

Hmmmm! Interesting suggestion. Anyone know if one of the Ion Chromatography vendors (Dionex, Alltech, etc.) sell their suppressor system as a "stand-alone"?

-- Tom Jupille / LC Resources

We were using Metrohm´s device (based on three cation exchanger cartridges). It can be controlled by the computer. Dionex sells a self-regenerating system.

The Metrohm MSM device can be used separately to non-metrohm devices too.
They have a new dual suppressor which can do hydroxide and carbonate/hydrogen carbonates eluents. It also doed gradients too. This can be added to other vendor machines. The system needs to be PEEK if using Hydroxide eluent.