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Choosing Peristaltic Pump Tubing: PVC, Solva, Viton or Pharmaprene?

Most pump tubing failures aren't pump failures. They're material choices that were never really made: somebody ordered what was on the shelf, it worked, and nobody revisited it. Then a method changes, the solvent changes, and the tubing starts swelling, hardening or splitting three days into a run.

There are four material families in routine lab use, and the decision between them takes about two minutes once you know what you're looking at. 

Collared Tubing (900 x 300 px)

PVC (General Purpose)

The default, and for good reason. PVC has excellent mechanical memory, which matters in a peristaltic pump: the tubing is occluded and released several times a second, and it needs to spring back to the same internal diameter every time. PVC does that reliably and cheaply.

Use it for aqueous samples, buffers, dilute acids and dilute bases. Avoid it for ketones, chlorinated solvents and aromatic hydrocarbons, which will plasticise and soften the wall.

PVC Analytical

Same base polymer, tighter manufacturing tolerance. If you're feeding an ICP-OES, ICP-MS or autoanalyser, this is the grade you want, because analytical-grade tubing is held to closer I.D. control and lower extractables. When your internal standard has to stay flat across a 200-sample run, bore tolerance isn't a detail. It's the whole game.

PVC Flowmeasured

Individually flow-tested tubing, available in standard and long lengths and with flared ends. Worth the premium where you need reproducible delivery between tubes rather than just within one tube: multichannel work, method validation, and anywhere a flow discrepancy between channels turns into a data question you have to answer later.

PVC Solva (Solvent Flexible)

The compromise grade. Better resistance to organic solvents than standard PVC while keeping most of the flexibility and pump life. Reach for it when you've got moderate solvent exposure but the run times don't justify a fluoroelastomer.

Viton®

The fluoroelastomer option. Outstanding resistance to aggressive solvents, oils, concentrated acids and high temperatures. The trade-off is stiffness: Viton needs more torque, and it doesn't have the same fatigue life under continuous occlusion as PVC. Specify it when chemistry rules everything else out, not as a general upgrade.

Pharmaprene® / Santoprene®

Thermoplastic elastomer with very low extractables and excellent resistance to acids, bases and aqueous chemistry. This is the grade for pharmaceutical, biotech and any application where leachables into the sample stream are a validation problem. It also handles sterilisation and a wide temperature range.

The two-minute decision

  1. What's going through it? Aqueous and mild reagents, start with PVC. Organic solvents, go Solva or Viton. Aggressive acids, oils or heat, go Viton. Regulated or leachable-sensitive, go Pharmaprene.
  2. What's the instrument? ICP, ICP-MS or autoanalyser, specify Analytical grade regardless of material family.
  3. How many channels? Multichannel with tight flow-matching requirements, use Flowmeasured.
  4. How long are the runs? Continuous, unattended operation favours PVC's fatigue life. Change materials only when the chemistry forces you to.

One more thing worth saying plainly

Pump tubing is a consumable, and it's priced like one when you buy it from a specialist. Our collared tubing starts at £41 for a pack of 12, across every material family and every I.D. from 0.13mm to 3.18mm. If you're paying instrument-manufacturer prices for what is fundamentally an extruded polymer tube with two plastic collars on it, you're funding somebody's branding budget.

High-quality consumables at unrivalled prices. Request a free sample of any tubing in the range and try it on your own pump before you commit to a box.

Browse the full collared tubing range or request a free sample.
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