[harmonslide]

After working up and running a silica plug on a reaction I did, I discovered via NMR that there is a fair bit of vacuum grease (integrates to about 0.2 compared to product protons). Enough, at least, to interfere with getting a final mass.

Is there a good way to remove this stuff without running a column? I'd like to avoid that if I can. I was surprised it wasn't removed by the silica plug (I ran pet ether through, which should have eluted the vacuum grease, then collected the product with dichloromethane).

[Smrt guy]

I usually wash my products with pentane to remove grease.  If your product is soluble in pentane, grease is soluble in just about every solvent, so just find one that your product is insoluble in.