At present, more and more industries of enterprises and public institutions have their own laboratories. And these laboratories have a variety of experimental testing items in continuous progress every day. It is conceivable that every experiment will inevitably and inevitably produce different quantities and types of test substances remaining attached to the glassware. Therefore, the cleaning of experimental residual materials has become an unavoidable part of the daily work of the laboratory.

It is understood that in order to solve the experimental residual contaminants in glassware, most laboratories have to invest a lot of thought, manpower and material resources, but the results are often not satisfactory. So, how can the cleaning of experimental residues in glassware be safe and efficient? In fact, if we can figure out the following precautions and handle them properly, this problem will naturally be solved.

First : What residues are usually left in laboratory glassware?

During the experiment, the three wastes are usually produced, namely waste gas, waste liquid, and waste solids. That is, residual pollutants with no experimental value. For glassware, the most common residues are dust, cleansing lotions, water-soluble substances, and insoluble substances.

Among them, soluble residues include free alkali, dyes, indicators, Na2SO4, NaHSO4 solids, iodine traces and other organic residues; insoluble substances include petrolatum, phenolic resin, phenol, grease, ointment, protein, blood stains , Cell culture medium, fermentation residue, DNA and RNA, fiber, metal oxide, calcium carbonate, sulfide, silver salt, synthetic detergent and other impurities. These substances often adhere to the walls of laboratory glassware such as test tubes, burettes, volumetric flasks, and pipettes.

It is not difficult to find that the salient characteristics of the residues of the glassware used in the experiment can be summarized as follows: 1. There are many kinds; 2. The pollution degree is different; 3. The shape is complex; 4. It is toxic, corrosive, explosive, infectious and other hazards.

Second: What are the adverse effects of experimental residues?

Adverse factors 1:  the experiment failed. First of all, whether the pre-experiment processing meets the standards will directly affect the accuracy of the experimental results. Nowadays, experimental projects have more and more stringent requirements for the accuracy, traceability, and verification of experimental results. Therefore, the presence of residues will inevitably cause interfering factors to the experimental results, and thus cannot successfully achieve the purpose of experimental detection.

Adverse factors 2:  the experimental residue has many significant or potential threats to the human body. In particular, some tested drugs have chemical characteristics such as toxicity and volatility, and a little carelessness may directly or indirectly harm the physical and mental health of contacts. Especially in the steps of cleaning glass instruments, this situation is not uncommon.

Adverse effect 3: Moreover, if the experimental residues cannot be properly and thoroughly treated, it will seriously pollute the experimental environment, transforming the air and water sources into irreversible consequences. If most laboratories want to improve this problem, it is inevitable that it will be time-consuming, laborious and costly… and this has essentially risen to become a hidden problem in laboratory management and operation.

Third: What are the methods to deal with the experimental residues of glassware?

Regarding laboratory glassware residues, the industry mainly uses three methods: manual washing, ultrasonic cleaning, and automatic glassware washer machine cleaning to achieve the purpose of cleaning. The characteristics of the three methods are as follows:

Method 1:  Manual washing

Manual cleaning is the main method of washing and rinsing with flowing water. (Sometimes it is necessary to use pre-configured lotion and test tube brushes to assist) The whole process requires experimenters to spend a lot of energy, physical strength, and time to complete the purpose of removing residues. At the same time, this cleaning method cannot predict the consumption of hydropower resources. In the manual washing process, important index data such as temperature, conductivity, and pH value are even more difficult to achieve scientific and effective control, recording, and statistics. And the final cleaning effect of the glassware is often unable to meet the requirements of the cleanliness of the experiment.

Method 2: Ultrasonic cleaning

Ultrasonic cleaning is applied to small-volume glassware (not measuring tools), such as vials for HPLC. Because this kind of glassware is inconvenient to clean with a brush or filled with liquid, ultrasonic cleaning is used. Before ultrasonic cleaning, the water soluble substances, part of insoluble substances and dust in the glassware should be roughly washed with water, and then a certain concentration of detergent should be injected, ultrasonic cleaning is used for 10-30 minutes, the washing liquid should be washed with water, and then purified Water ultrasonic cleaning 2 to 3 times. Many steps in this process require manual operations.

It should be emphasized that if the ultrasonic cleaning is not properly controlled, there will be a great chance to cause cracks and damage to the cleaned glass container.

Method 3: Automatic glassware washer

The automatic cleaning machine adopts intelligent microcomputer control, is suitable for the thorough cleaning of a variety of glassware, supports diversified, batch cleaning, and the cleaning process is standardized and can be copied and data can be traced.  Automatic bottle washing machine not only frees researchers from the complicated manual labor of cleaning glassware and the hidden safety risks, but also focuses on more valuable scientific research tasks. because it saves water, electricity and is more green Environmental protection has increased economic benefits for the entire laboratory in the long time. Moreover, the use of a fully automatic bottle washing machine is more conducive to the comprehensive level of the laboratory to achieve GMP\FDA certification and specifications, which is beneficial to the development of the laboratory. In short, the automatic bottle washing machine clearly avoids the interference of subjective errors, so that the cleaning results are accurate and uniform, and the cleanliness of the utensils after cleaning becomes more perfect and ideal!