Labware Cleaning: Pre-soaking Pipettes
Q. Why is it important to pre-soak pipettes in 1% Alconox or Liquinox before washing in pipette siphon washer with Alcotabs?
A. The most common problem in pipette cleaning is residues that dry on after use and prior to cleaning. This problem is attributed to the failure to pre-soak the pipettes immediately after use. Our technical experts at Alconox recommend placing soiled pipettes in 1% Alconox or Liquinox solution immediately. Learn More.
Cleaning Carbon Deposit Swirls On Alumina Parts
Q. Our parts, made of 99.5% alumina, have carbon deposits that show up after our brazing process. We do not use a flux for our ceramic parts; we high-temp fire a moly/manganese painted paste onto the ceramic. The part is then sent out for nickel plating to prevent corrosion of the moly manganese metallization areas. The next step is our brazing.
We are not seeing any spots on the parts before brazing, but as we continue through 5 brazing cycles and braze in a hydrogen/Nitrogen furnace with the cusil braze rings, we see black spots forming that show up as high-carbon deposits with the SEM data…
Cleaning Glassware with Adhesives and APIs
Q. We have glassware that contains adhesive and API dissolved in organic solvents. If we do not do additional organic rinses prior to the aqueous rinses we have issues. Is there any way we can avoid the organic rinses?
A. To avoid organic rinses, you can soak in a high emulsifying cleaner such as a 1% Alconox solution (1.25 oz/gal or 10 g/L) prior to aqueous rinsing. Ideally soak in a warm or hot solution for fastest and most reliable results. The emulsifiers in Alconox will emulsify the solvents and active pharmaceutical ingredients (API). Be sure to rinse at the same temperature you are soaking at so you do not break the emulsion and redeposit the API or solvents. If you soak hot . . .
Minimum Detergent Concentration?
My question is related to a minimum detergent concentration. We manually wash labware of all sizes in 0.3% Liquinox solution. We also pre-wash or pre-rinse the labware and control our parts load. We rarely have failures. We want to change our protocol to extend the wash water use for one day instead of based on a numerical parts load. Do you think a 0.3% Liquinox concentration is sufficient detergent capacity to go an entire day?
Removing Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs)
Is Alconox and/or Liquinox an effective detergent for rinsing and removing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from non-porous surfaces (such as excavation equipment)? We have a great deal of experience with remediating PCBs with both powdered and liquid concentrate detergent options.
