Nexera Series Auto Diagnostic and Recovery Feature

Pump anomalies like air bubbles or sticky check valves are some of the most common issues encountered in HPLC analysis.  They often occur overnight during unattended operation and are not caught until the next day, long after they have occurred.  These problems typically result in invalid data, wasted instrument time, and lengthy re-preparation of samples.

Shimadzu’s new Auto Diagnostic and Recovery (AD&R) feature enables the Nexera (U)HPLC to automatically detect and recover from flow anomalies without user intervention to increase productivity and reduce down-time.  This feature, available in the LabSolutions software, monitors the pump for pressure fluctuations.  When anomalies are detected the software takes 4 steps:

• Pauses the batch
• Purges the pumps to correct the anomaly
• Restarts the pumps and monitors the pressure to ensure the problem is corrected
• Re-injects the sample that it detected the failure in

Figure 1. Schematic of the AD&R function.

An event is created in the error log whenever the AD&R detects a flow anomaly.  If the problem is corrected the analysis will proceed with further samples, allowing the user to review the data for suitability when they return.  If the AD&R continues to detect pressure fluctuations an additional event is logged and the analysis is halted, preventing the generation of invalid data.