Radleys claims it Heat-On blocks offer a faster method of heating round bottom flasks compared with conventional oil baths
Searching for a safe and cost effective alternative to oil baths, chemists at a leading 'green' university in Australia have invested in multiple Heat-On blocks for use in their teaching and research labs.
Commenting on their existing methods, the lead chemist said that most of their work requiring heating of reaction mixtures involved the use of oil baths, but with the high cost of silicone oils, many people were using less safe paraffin oils.
'We investigated blocks from several different suppliers but chose Heat-On for several reasons,' said the chemist.
'The main reason was that unlike nested systems the 250ml, 500ml, 1 litre, 2 litre and 3 litre came as stand-alone blocks, so more than one person can perform a reaction at a time.
The other block system we considered had several "nested" sizes, so you needed the 1 litre block with a 250ml insert to do a 250ml reaction, precluding anyone else doing another reaction as the base block is already in use.' According to the University, the slightly higher cost of the Heat-On package is balanced by the ability to set up several reactions using the separate blocks.
