Laboratory

Alconox Inc. cleaners that are used to clean pharmaceutical, biotech, medical, food and other regulated industries product contact surfaces, in good manufacturing practice (GMP) validated environments, need certificates of analysis obtained and kept on file. These certificates of analysis (COA) can document the analysis of a specific lot of detergent and verify that it conforms to the manufacturer’s specifications.  Confirming that the detergent has not changed.

The critical micelle concentration is the minimum concentration at which the emulsifiers in a detergent will coalesce in to membrane structures of globes, rods or sheets with their hydrophobic (water hating) ends on the inside of the membrane and their hydrophilic (water loving) ends on the outside such that hydrophobic oily residues can be emulsified inside these membrane structures.  Micelles are further elaborated on below.  If you are below the critical micelle concentration, you do not have effective emulsifying of oily residues.

Q: We’ve switched from base and acid baths to a Citranox solution for cleaning glassware used to distill H2S from marine sediments using Cr2 , concentrated HCl, and AgNO3. It seems to do a good job on most of the apparatus but we still see grayish deposits on the glass frits. Any suggestions?

A: The detail is appreciated.  Whenever there is a “mystery” residue, whether it be on glass frits or any hard surface….

Q: We are a mid-sized medical device company and are looking at reviewing and optimizing our supply chain.  Our goal is to move towards a culture of risk mitigation of our raw materials.  As a consumer of your detergents, what is Alconox Inc. doing to ensure consistent supply chain?

A: Thank you for the question as it is both important, and certainly an area of deserved focus and scrutiny from regulatory bodies.  Ensuring a continuous supply of drug, medical device or laboratory products requires a dependable supply of raw materials….

Q: We are using Detonox detergent in our ultrasonic baths and are loving it.  We use a visual inspection method (cloudiness of solution) to determine when to change the bath and are moving to conductivity and pH. It appears pH stays constant regardless of concentration?

A: As a broad statement, detergent concentration does very little to affect pH due to buffers, as well as salts, micelles, and other constituents.  A pH meter wouldn’t be used to control for concentration on anything but very gross scales.