Time Efficient Method for Washing 15 mL Vials
Arrange vials so that they all sit upright in a large plastic cage.
I’ve found you can usually fit about 60 vials (a bit more than one bag) into a single cage.
Place caps into a small cage.
Place cages upright into a soap bath overnight.
Place a large piece of PTFE over the cages to keep them submerged.
Remove cages from soap, and rinse thoroughly 7 times to remove soap.
It’s important to make sure that water gets into each individual vial, so move the cage back and forth until each of the vials is at least partially filled.
When pouring the water back out, make sure to shake the cage so that in interior of all the vials is rinsed.
Rinse the outsides in between rinsing the vial interiors.
Place cages upright into a 1N HCl bath.
Once or twice during the week, invert and/or rotate all of the cages (vials and caps) to make sure all surfaces are exposed.
Remove vials and caps from the bath and rinse each cage 7 times to remove most of the HCl.
Clean an area in the drying bench with a clean wipe, and place cages into the drying bench.
With thoroughly cleaned and rinsed poly gloves, remove each vial from the cage and individually rinse the vial plus one cap three times.
Stand in front of the flow bench to shake out excess water, cap vial, and place in a bag for storage.
