Critical Cleaning - Alconox, Inc.: Cleaning Lab Glassware Exposed to Sea Water

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Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Cleaning Lab Glassware Exposed to Sea Water

Question:
What is the proper way to clean lab glassware that has been exposed to sea water?

Answer:
Sea water contains a large and variable quantity of salts, biological and organic residues. Lab glassware needs to be free of any of these residues to avoid interference in research involving sea water. Sea water would not particularly present challenges beyond the normal array of residues that lab glassware sees in the wide variety of types of lab glassware that Alconox, Inc. laboratory detergents are used to clean. A standard cleaning protocol, see the users manual at the top right hand corner of this web page, will work fine. For typical manual cleaning wash with 1% Alconox or Liquinox in warm water followed by a thorough rinse in water of suitable purity) for standard laboratory cleaning requirements. If you are doing some extremely sensitive analytical procedure with the glassware (beyond ppm analytical detections), then you will want to pay particular attention to your rinsing technique and the quality of your rinse water. In general use deionized water for inorganic analysis rinsing and distilled water for organic analysis rinsing. Carbon filtered or reverse osmosis water can be used in place of distilled water typically. Rinse more than the standard three time rinse for more critical analytical glassware. In the event of glassware used for extreme low level inorganic analysis, an intermediate acid wash step after cleaning with the Alconox or Liquinox will improve cleaning. For manual cleaning use a warm 2% Citranox for the acid cleaning step prior to the final thorough rinse.

To learn more about Alconox brand detergents, ask the experts at cleaning@alconox.com.

(Cleaning Lab Glassware Exposed to Sea Water)