Is the laboratory automatic glassware washer a “helper” or an “IQ tax”? We invited a lab tester to share his experience and see what he had to say.　　

The impressions of laboratory inspectors in food testing institutions:

We used to do inspection experiments, and the thing that made us very frustrated was the cleaning of the bottles. When we conduct sampling inspections on food, we will detect the excess of many harmful substances such as nitrite and pesticide residues in the food. After the laboratory is over, the used pipettes, beakers and other utensils must be cleaned manually. There are often bottles with a lot of oil stains that are difficult to clean, and they are washed with a lot of pure water and tap water in time, but they are still not clean enough. And we are usually very busy at work, so we can only squeeze time to work overtime and stay up late to deal with these difficult bottles.

After adding a laboratory automatic bottle washing machine from our laboratory, it solved a big problem for us. We usually wash the bottles by hand for about 5 hours, and the bottle washing machine can clean them in 45 minutes. The equipment has a drying system, and the washed bottles are the same as new ones. The machine has many kinds of cleaning programs that can be freely selected, and there are also many customized cleaning programs. The special cleaning agent used is a concentrated solution, and the dosage is 5-10ML each time.

And to our surprise, after using it, we found that not only does it not consume water, but it saves us a lot of water. When washing by hand, I was afraid that it would not be clean enough to affect the results of the experiment, so I would turn on the faucet to rinse the bottle vigorously, and a lot of it would be washed down, which would really waste a lot of water. With the bottle washing machine, the amount of water can be controlled in every link, and the water cost of the laboratory is much lower than in the past.

Through the sharing of the above-mentioned experimenters, we can see that the bottle washing machine can not only clean the experimental utensils faster and better, but also save water. How does it do it? Let’s see the washing process below to understand it.

The washing process of the spray laboratory automatic bottle washing machine:

1. Pre-cleaning: first use tap water once, and use the spray arm to perform high-pressure circular washing on the vessel to rinse off the residue in the bottle and vessel, and drain the dirty water after washing. (Conditional laboratories can use pure water instead of tap water)

2. Main cleaning: Enter tap water for the second time, heat up cleaning (adjustable in units of 1°C, adjustable to 93°C), the equipment automatically adds alkaline cleaning agent, and continues to perform high-pressure cycle washing on bottles and dishes through the spray arm , Drain the dirty water after washing.

3. Neutralization and cleaning: Enter tap water for the third time, the cleaning temperature is about 45°C, the equipment automatically adds acidic cleaning agent, and continues to rinse the bottles and dishes with high pressure through the spray arm, and drain the dirty water after washing.

4. Rinsing: There are 3 times of rinsing in total;

 (1) Enter tap water, choose heating rinse;

(2) Enter pure water, choose heating rinse;

 (3) Enter pure water for rinsing, choose heating rinse; rinse water temperature can be set to 93° C, generally around 75°C is recommended.

5. Drying: The rinsed bottles are quickly and cleanly dried inside and outside the container during the process of cyclic heating, steam blowing, condensation, and discharge, while avoiding secondary pollution after cleaning.

Of course, the above cleaning process is just a routine process. The washing machine can choose the cleaning program according to the specific needs of the laboratory utensils. The whole process of equipment is automatically cleaned, and after the equipment starts the cleaning function, no personnel are required to perform any operations.

To sum up, the laboratory automatic bottle washing machine is of course a very good helper for our laboratory, which is why most laboratories are now equipped with this equipment.