Porvair Sciences’ evaporators are designed to remove the traditional laboratory bottleneck of solvent evaporation from microplates, vials or tubes prior to analysis or reconstitution in another solvent. These evaporators give significant throughput advantages to laboratories aiming to optimise sample preparation productivity. They are faster than centrifugal evaporation, and significant increases in sample throughput are achieved through advanced evaporator head technology and an innovative manifold design. This directs heated nitrogen into every well of a microplate simultaneously. The evaporators are designed to be simple to install, operate and maintain. Installation requires only connection to a gas supply or cylinder and mains electricity. The compact units are designed to fit into fume cupboards and UK conformity assessed (UKCA) ensuring a high level of safety during operation.
Nitrogen Blowdown
The concept of nitrogen blow-down is straightforward. Gas is blown onto a liquid in a sample holder, which could be a microplate, vial or tube. This gas disturbs the liquid surface and ejects solvent vapour from the sample holder at a higher rate than at ambient conditions. The Ultravap® range of evaporators use a heated gas, which increases the energy of the gas, resulting in faster solvent evaporation.
Solvent Compatibility
Many common chromatography solvents, such as acetonitrile, methanol, dichloromethane and hexane, can be evaporated with ease due to nitrogen blowdown’s suitability for volatile organic solvents. Evaporation times for less volatile solvents such as water, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and dimethylformamide (DMF) are greatly reduced. In addition, both the Ultravap® Mistral and Ultravap® Levante can heat the gas up to 80 °C which further increases evaporation of higher boiling point solvents.
