SRC microwave digestion Archive

Eurofins’ Trace Element Laboratory in Auckland, New Zealand offers different services including testing water, air, soil, waste and other products to assess their quality and impact on health and the environment. At the Trace Element Laboratory in Auckland, New Zealand, Eurofins performed digestions using a heating block and perchloric acid. This approach was not only time consuming, but the large volumes of perchloric acid also posed a serious health and safety risk. The lab purchased Milestone’s ultraWAVE microwave digestion system as an alternative to the heating block. The ultraWAVE performed complete digestions of the lab’s samples, increasing throughput while removing the health and safety risk.

SYNLAB is one of the largest service laboratories in Europe. The lab needed units able to handle the growth in sample workload and improve its detection limits while reducing the analytical blank. These systems have exceeded SYNLAB's expectations, increasing the sample digestion capacity of the laboratory by 100%, while reducing costs and significantly improving digestion quality.

Total Research and Technology Feluy (TRTF) is based in Feluy, Belgium and is the research and development center for Total’s refining and petrochemicals branch. TRTF’s R&D work is focused on optimizing polymers and catalysts to support the petrochemical branch’s production of olefins, benzene, toluene, xylenes, and styrene, as well as numerous commodity polymers, including polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene. Total’s research and development laboratory in Belgium was experiencing a significant loss of volatile elements while digesting organic samples, which include catalysts, oils and polymers. After installing the ultraWAVE, Total’s R&D lab was able to significantly improve its recovery rates for the volatile elements it tests for, which includes mercury, phosphorus, and osmium.

The Vlaardingen R&D facility in the Netherlands is the research centre for Unilever’s foods brands, and also the development centre for Spreads and Dressings brands and Food Solutions. We could not reach the detection limits needed to obtain good results with our ICP-MS analyzer because of the cross-contamination during the sample preparation step. The ultraWAVE replaced their existing closed vessel microwave system and doubled their sample digestion capacity without increasing the hours of labor associated with the current sample prep. They are now able to digest any difficult sample while obtaining very low blanks and no evidence of cross contamination.

Exova is a global provider of laboratory testing advising and assuring services to many of the world’s most innovative companies. Exova’s Santa Fe Springs, CA, lab specializes in testing for the pharmaceutical and supplement industries. We had a wide range of pharmaceutical and supplement samples to digest for metals analysis, including many challenging matrices. In mid-2011 we invested in an ultraWAVE to help reduce our sample prep bottleneck. The ultraWAVE exceeded our expectations, increasing throughput, reducing costs, and improving digestion quality. It increased the sample digestion capacity of the lab by 50%-70%, but due to the large increase in our sample workload, we needed to further increase our sample prep capacity. In May 2012, we ordered a second ultraWAVE unit.

Chemical Solutions Ltd. has developed an expertise in developing spectrochemical methods for the digestion and accurate recovery of extremely low-level elemental constituents in complex pharmaceutical and nutraceutical matrices. Milestone’s ultraWAVE, ETHOS UP and traceCLEAN have all helped Chemical Solutions meet the needs of a large and diverse range of samples and customers while accommodating their intense workload and operation of multiple ICP and ICP-MS systems in a cost-effective manner.

Experimental Station for the Food Preserving Industry (SSICA) relied on hot block digestion systems that required long times to complete digestion and the final solutions often presented with a high residual carbon content that interfered with subsequent analysis. The ultraWAVE enabled the digestion of difficult matrices while obtaining very low blanks and no evidence of cross contamination. Any combination of sample types and weights with different acid chemistries can be digested in the same run.

The ICP (Inductively Coupled Plasma) Research Laboratory in the Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at University of Houston specializes in characterizing the elemental and isotopic compositions of materials. This lab is capable of analyzing all types of geological materials including rocks, minerals, natural fluids and organic materials including crude oil with high precision. “Multiple projects were conducted at the facility concurrently and we experienced an immediate need for better instrumentation to replace our current traditional bomb method of digestion, lasting greater than 48 hours for the toughest of samples.” With the aid of the ultraWAVE microwave digestion system, that can digest up to 22 samples with mixed acid including HNO3, HCl and HF under high temperatures (up to 260°C) and high pressure (up to 150 bar), the laboratory has been successfully digesting various geological rock samples (mantle rock, volcanic rock, sediment and metamorphic rocks), zeolite, polymers, and heavy crude oils.

Valisure is the first and only pharmacy to independently batch-test the medications they receive to confirm the drugs are suitable for their customers before they dispense them. Valisure gained the ability to process mix-batch samples with microwave digestion, from pharmaceutical to supplement samples, from creams to topicals to tablet in a single sample preparation process. getting reliable recoveries for volatile elements such as mercury and sulfur