Blog | Organomation

Concentrating on Sample Preparation Challenges

Written by David Oliva | September 28, 2023

One of the benefits Organomation derives from being a family business is that several individuals in the ownership and management ranks have grown up in the business. Similarly, the company also has a number of long-standing employees who have worked with the company for more than a decade. This manifests itself in the staff's ability to provide quality customer support, having helped guide laboratories through their sample preparation challenges ahead of analysis such as mass spec and HPLC over the years. 

While the staff's experience helps us provide chemists with exemplary customer services, we also believe that unique challenges require unique solutions. We aim to highlight our notable solvent removal instrumentation which we've customized for companies all over the world. In some cases, we are lightly modifying one of our existing evaporators such as a MICROVAP capable or drying down 30 mm sample vials. In other cases, a laboratory wanted to use of our sample concentrators for a unique task such a nitrogen purging

Occasionally, a customer reaches out to use for assistance with a rare dilemma we may not have come across before. Historically, Organomation only produced a membrane-based nitrogen generation system. The beauty of these systems is that they rely on compressed air. These nitrogen generators allow laboratories to finally move away from wasting time sourcing and swapping out bulky nitrogen tanks on a regular basis. These generators proved to be a great fit for our blowdown evaporator users for a host of reasons.

→ Discover: How Membrane Nitrogen Generators Work

First, as nitrogen evaporators do not require ultra-high purity N2, these generators could produce the ideal flow which was required. Also, due to the prevalence of compressed air within labs, either through a standalone compressor or the compressed air source within a fume hood, the generators were affordable and had an attractively short payback period

However, this solution was not ideal for all our nitrogen evaporation customers. One research laboratory needed a generator powerful enough to supply four small vial evaporators at one time. We went to work researching a unique N2 generation solution which would allow the customer to prepare almost 100 samples at a time without needing to continuously replace nitrogen tanks. 

What we learned was that it rarely makes sense to individually source an oil-less air compressor to pair with a membrane-based generator as it is cost prohibitive. A large portion of the cost of the "all-in-one" nitrogen generators is caused by the built in air compressor. 

At that point, we made the decision to sell a PSA nitrogen generator with a built-in air compressor. PSA or Pressure Swing Adsorption, creates nitrogen when the molecules of oxygen within the compressed air are trapped in a sieve through adsorption, the process which isolates the N2 gas. These powerful laboratory gas generation systems are perfect for supplying several blowdown workstations or a single LC-MS. 

→ Discover: How PSA Nitrogen Generators Work

As we aim to serve laboratories on the cutting edge of research and analytical testing, the company's ability to be current with the latest challenge in sample preparation is of paramount importance. If your laboratory could benefit from advice on better sample prep, please contact us