I am currently working on a project and the protocol says the following, "Wash resin 3 times 10 vols of the extract buffer." This is very confusing to me and I am not exactly sure what the 10 vols part means. I tried to look it up, however, the few explanations I found were still confusing. I am new to research, and have not been exposed really to the "lingo".
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5$\begingroup$ Some experimental procedures are only good enough to be chucked at the heads of the people who wrote them for inclarity — your’s is an example. $\endgroup$– JanCommented Oct 30, 2016 at 22:09
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$\begingroup$ 10 vols means multiply 10 by the amount of starting material in the protocol. For instance, if you have a 4 g reaction, wash with 4x10 = 40 mL three times in your case. This is routine nomenclature in research. $\endgroup$– user154262Commented Aug 19 at 18:50
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1$\begingroup$ It isn't routine nomenclature. It is - if any at all - lab jargon and should not be used in a scientific environment. $\endgroup$– Martin - マーチン ♦Commented Aug 19 at 20:28
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$\begingroup$ @Martin-マーチン I actually came across the nomenclature (for the first time since I saw this post) this morning in an article from Thermochimica Acta. I guess it is used in some circles after all...? $\endgroup$– isolated matrixCommented Aug 22 at 9:19
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Both answers represent incorrect interpretations of a poorly written protocol. The volume in question refers to the resin volume enclosed within a chromatographic column, similar to that of a burette. Suppose the solid resin occupies 5 mL in a cylindrical tube. When someone instructs to wash the resin with a buffer 10 times the (bed) volume, it means to wash the resin with 5 mL × 10 = 50 mL of the buffer solution. The protocol suggests to repeat this procedure three times.
The 10 column volumes rinse is a typical rule of thumb to equilibrate the column in analytical or preparative chromatography. In a rigorous sense, this refers to the total void volume (empty space) between the packing particles and the pore volume of the porous resin not the actual occupied resin volume. For a margin of safety and ensuring equilibration, there is no harm in overestimating the resin volume.
