CEM says its MARS™ 6 Microwave Reaction System improves efficiency in environmental laboratories while saving money on expensive solvents and reducing the environmental impact.
Extraction processes based on microwave technology are proven methods accepted throughout the world by professional and governmental organisations. CEM’s MARS™ 6 Microwave Reaction System can perform over 500 closed vessel microwave extractions for the same amount of solvent normally consumed during 32 Soxhlet extractions, the company says.
They go on to say that the system is easy to use and multiple samples can be run in parallel with none of the problems, like solvent leaks and vessel blockage, associated with other approaches.
These advantages make microwave extraction, and CEM’s MARS™ 6 Microwave Reaction System, particularly suitable for environmental laboratories. In these facilities solvent extraction is regularly used for determining, in soils, clays, sediments, sludges, solid waste and other environmental samples, an array of contaminants such as phenols, dioxins, furans, organochlorine pesticides, semivolatile organics, PAHs, phenoxyacid herbicides and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
PCBs are of particular concern because, despite now being banned, over 50 years of use in paints, flame retardants and electrical gear has led to a continued leakage into the soil from landfill sites and eventually into the marine environment. Entering the aquatic food chain PCBs have become concentrated in the blubber of major predators such as whales and dolphins.
As PCBs are immune system suppressants and carcinogens, and effect reproductive cycles, this is bad for aquatic wildlife as well as, potentially, for humans. Some cetaceans are even now thought to be threatened with extinction.
Environmental laboratories, following US EPA Method 3546, may prepare and analyse several hundred samples per week. Traditional solvent extractions have usually involved either banks of Soxhlet extractors or slow, sequential pressurised systems that can only process one sample every 20 minutes.
The result can be a throughput bottleneck lowering efficiency. The company claims that microwave extraction and its MARS™ 6 Microwave Reaction System can increase an environmental laboratory productivity while reducing the need for expensive, and environmentally damaging, reagents.
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