– Introduction
The Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering at the University of Cincinnati specializes in analyzing environmental samples, including water and sediment, with a focus on quantifying organic pollutants such as PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) and PPCPs (pharmaceuticals and personal care products). A critical part of their analysis involves Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) using the Oasis HLB followed by Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS) using the Agilent Q-TOF.
– The Challenge
Due to the sensitivity of their LC-MS unit, the lab must concentrate their samples prior to analysis. They typically have 10 samples per batch – each sample is 5 mL of either methanol or acetonitrile that must be evaporated to complete dryness.
Like many university labs, new equipment budgets remain low and grant funding can be few and far between. Because of this, they resorted to drying their samples with a makeshift evaporation setup in their fume hood. The setup allowed the mouth of the test tube to be pointed toward the compressed air outlet in their fume hood. Without a source of heat to the samples, this method took a little over 2 hours to dry down their excess solvent, and that wasn’t even to complete dryness. They were also only able to evaporate 1 sample at a time, causing a bottleneck in their entire workflow.
With some end of year budgets available, the laboratory team started looking into acquiring sample evaporation equipment which is how they came across Organomation.
– The Solution
Organomation has been manufacturing solvent concentration equipment for laboratories for over 65 years. Our team of industry experts was able to find a fitted solution for the University of Cincinnati that could meet their application’s needs while staying within budget. The lab decided to go with a 12 position N-EVAP evaporator.
Continue reading here: https://blog.organomation.com/blog/manual-to-automated-solvent-drying-is-it-worth-the-switch
