Gain Time Save Budget - Speed up your sample preparation with microwave enhanced systems

Sample preparation can account for up to 80% of the total time to complete an analysis. Reducing this bottleneck must be a first priority for the laboratory and can be achieved using microwave enhanced technology that during the past few decades has moved from an academic curiosity to widespread acceptance across many application areas such as digestion, ashing, extraction, and synthesis. Benefits these systems can offer include increased sample throughput, safer working conditions, reduced operating costs, reduced solvent usage, and improved reproducibility.

Digestion systems

The Milestone ETHOS digestion systems are specifically designed for closed vessel acid digestion. With a comprehensive choice of accessories, they additionally offer a complete first-class solution for microwave solvent extraction, organic and inorganic synthesis, protein hydrolysis, and vacuum evaporation.

The latest innovation in microwave digestion has come from the UltraWAVE with Single Reaction Chamber (SRC) technology where up to 22 samples can be digested in a total run time of 35 minutes. With SRC, any combination of sample types and weights with different acid chemistries can be digested at the same time so there is no need to batch samples of the same type into separate runs. A top temperature of 300°C and an operating pressure up to 199 bar enables complete digestion of the most difficult samples. This makes the UltraWAVE perfect for laboratories that have multiple sample types to digest or want the high throughput capability of SRC technology.

Ashing systems

The Milestone PYRO ashing system is suitable for conventional ashing, sulphated ashing, loss on ignition (LOI), residue on ignition (ROI), fusion and all high-temperature reactions under controlled conditions.

Ashing times can be reduced by up to 95% from hours to minutes using standard crucibles. Benefits include an integral exhaust system with no loss of heat to the laboratory plus odours are removed thereby eliminating exposure to the operator to fumes. Even temperature distribution across the muffle eliminates cold spots and ensures reproducible ashing across all crucibles.

Extraction systems

New environmental application notes are now available for the Milestone ETHOS X extraction system for extraction of Dioxins, Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins and Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons (TPH) from samples such as soil and sediment. Extraction of up to 24 samples up to 30g in weight can take place within 40 minutes simultaneously and the use of 100ml low-cost disposable glass vials eliminates memory effects and cleaning.

The EthosX also offers Fatty Acid Methyl Ester (FAME) preparation capability and can derivatise fatty acids in up to 44 samples simultaneously for subsequent analysis by GC/GCMS. A new application area is fat determination and extraction in foods that provides faster, safer and lower-cost fat extraction than traditional methods.  Accurate total fat determination can be achieved in just 90 minutes and with just 25ml of solvent

All Milestone microwave enhanced systems are controlled via a full-colour touchscreen interface and offer full data storage and transfer to laboratory LIMS systems.