Residual Solvents: Mitigating Laboratory Contamination – A New Approach

Jini Glaros, Wyatt Bergel, and Vincent Colonna – Modern Canna Labs

Abstract: 

While analyzing for residual solvents via full evaporation technique provides laboratories with a simple, economical, and efficient way to analyze for solvents in cannabis and hemp samples, there are still other hurdles that laboratories encounter during routine analysis, such as laboratory contamination. Solvents are frequently used in the laboratory for extractions, dilutions, and cleaning, therefore, eliminating these from the atmosphere of the facility is almost impossible. This is often combatted by secluding this analysis to its own location, isolating the ventilation system, and storing samples in an area where they will not be exposed to solvents. However, this does not always guarantee that the atmosphere will be free of laboratory contamination. As such, our laboratory has developed a technique that uses ultra-high purity nitrogen to remove contaminants from the atmosphere within the headspace vial, while preventing the loss of any solvents that may be present in the samples. In addition to mitigating laboratory contamination, this technique has also improved the instrument baseline and increased sensitivity by removing potential interferences that may exist in the atmosphere.