What are good lubricants for Bunsen burners?
We've been running into a lot of problems the last several years with our laboratory Bunsen burners becoming jammed and/or corroded. I've just come to find out that our lab tech has been lubricating the burners with glycerol.


Does the issue itself seem to have been caused by the glycerol?

Admittedly, we don't use many Bunsen burners nowadays as they're seen as being fairly unsafe in the kind of organic lab I work in where we handle large amounts of solvent, however we do have a well vented hood with several burners in. 

The ones we do have are very old indeed (pre 50's) and still work fine without the need for any maintenance (i.e. greasing).

Bunsen burners themselves are incredibly simple pieces of kit, if you do have issues with corrosion (i.e. because of an overly humid environment or harsh chemical vapours), the most sensible thing would be to disassemble, remove the corrosion and re-assemble.  The use of any kind of grease should be un-neccesary, especially as very few of them (other than very specialised products) can withstand long term exposure to heat without degradation.