Published: February 14, 2023
Q: Could you please recommend the best detergent and the appropriate concentration for cleaning quartz UV/Vis cuvettes? We perform dissolution by UV/Vis on various pharmaceutical products (primarily tablets and capsules) in aqueous solutions (examples: phosphate buffers, citrate buffers, surfactants (SDS, SLS, Tween), dilute acids, etc.).
A: There are a couple ways you can go here. Most labs cleaning analytical glassware rely on warm 1-2% solutions of Alconox® Powdered Precision Cleaner or Liquinox® Critical Cleaning Liquid Detergent, depending on their preference for a powder or liquid concentrate, respectively. If you have either or both on hand, they should work fine.
It sounds like you have some inorganics in play and some of the pharmaceutical residues could be as well. Recall that acid detergents are best for inorganics. In those cases warm 1-2% Citranox® Liquid Acid Cleaner and Detergent could be slightly better. This would indeed be our recommendation.
Again, there are plenty of overlaps between aqueous detergents – the nature of synergistic, multifaceted cleaning detergents – as they can all do each other’s job to a varying degrees.
If you are looking to clean via a washer, we would recommend the our low foaming acidic detergent – Citrajet® Low-Foam Liquid Acid Cleaner/Rinse
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