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While this article is not intended as a biology lesson, the use of flame photometers in the biological sciences is of paramount importance. Diagnostic medicine relies on fast determination of ionic metal ratios in bio-samples for life-saving treatment research. Those samples can be blood, saliva, urine, CSF (cerebrospinal fluid), gastric juices, or virtually any liquid the body can produce.  Indeed, methodologies have been developed to detect these important metals in biopsy samples or…um…solids produced by the body’s waste system. The presence of Sodium, Potassium, Lithium, Calcium, and Barium are all detectable by flame photometry.  Sodium, potassium, and calcium imbalances can result in death, of course, since these are the electrolytes of our bodies’ electrical architecture and the controllers of the on/off and intensity switches (channels) of functions like cardiac muscle contraction processes (heartbeat).  They are what allow our nerves to send all the vital signals that let us function. Barium and lithium have no known natural biological role, but lithium in a specific molecular form (lithium carbonate) can be used to ease bipolar disorders, mania, depression, mood disorders, and some other brain dysfunctions.  In some cases, it may act to reduce suicidal ideation. Some psychopharmacology experts entertain the idea that the lithium found in tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, nutmeg, and many other foods provide lithium in a micronutrient profile sufficient to ward off more serious conditions from developing in otherwise average people, as in this NIH study. Barium is considered nontoxic for humans.  It is used because it shows up well on X-rays, allowing imaging of soft tissues like the gastrointestinal tract, or the bowels. The point is that medical science needs to know when these metals are present, and in what amounts, to determine if they are sufficient to keep us alive, or too plentiful and threatening that status.  Flame photometry can offer the fastest route to that answer. Non-Humans Animals have bodily fluids, too.  Collecting fish, frogs, turtles, insects, and so on, in lakes, rivers, and swamps is extremely revealing to environmental biologists about contamination and pollution of the natural habitats that keep our planet running and in balance.  Similarly, terrestrial creatures can tell us about land use (or abuse). Best of all, you don’t need to kill the sample providers—they can be catch-and-release.  It is to the researchers’ advantage to return them to their habitat to continue acting as field agents collecting more environmental information for them.  Dart guns are less harmful than bullets, as most animal activists will agree. Detecting unexpected increases early provides the opportunity to find pollution violators and solve problems before they become toxic hazards.  This is not just for wildlife, of course, but the cascade that will eventually impact us, the humans. The Takeaway Ultimately flame photometry is an incredibly useful science.  It is easy to master, with only a slight learning curve, allowing someone to become competent in just one day. Our unique and tough portable units are unlike any other company’s offering.  They can operate in the field as easily as in the lab.  In situ testing is just as reliable as laboratory work. Whether your customers, research studies, or contractors provide samples or hire you to assess environments, BWB has just the equipment you need to succeed. Give us a call today and let us set you on the road to success.  We have the tools that you need, and we would love to hear from you to help turn you into the expert provider that customers will seek out!

It would be nice if body scanners and handheld medical tricorders from Star Trek existed.  Indeed, something similar is already in limited use, with an equally competent real life tricorder-like device possible within the decade.  However, since the beloved Dr. Leonard McCoy isn’t due to be born until the year 2227, we’re going to have to make do with what we have now. Luckily, for primitive 21st century humans, BWB Flame Photometers are among the most advanced analysis equipment available for vital detection of alkali and alkali earth metals.  They crank out fast, reliable results at a rate up to 120 per hour or more, detailing all the metal ions at once, instead of requiring a complete test for each individual sample. To attain that speed, samples must be prepared beforehand.  The most basic requirement is that the sample be a solution, completely without solids.  It must be aspirated through a very fine needle into a flame to release the ions so they can produce the light we need for analysis. Bodily Fluids Blood, plasma, red cells, urine, etc., are best diluted (proportionally) to make sure when you’re testing for sodium and potassium (for example) that they will fall in the 100 ppm range whereas the Flame photometer offers its greatest accuracy for those substances. Calcium and Barium, on the other hand, are most accurately quantified closer to 300 ppm, though they can be detected at much lower levels.  If your sample is likely to fall in the 100 ppm range, you can vacuum evaporate it to one-third volume (to triple the concentration) and the flame photometer readout can be divided by three to give you a much more precise result than if you simply tested the 100 ppm solution. This is not strictly necessary, but rather entirely dependent on what your customer specifies as the required accuracy.  If you charge “X” for 3% accuracy, it makes sense to charge “X + x%” for higher levels like 1% or 0.5% accuracy because of the additional prep-work involved. Testing Solids For the testing of organic solids, the samples of known mass are burnt to ash, typically in a ceramic bowl, in a lab oven (furnace).  Once water loss is no longer detected it is removed from the oven, allowed to cool, and then treated with small quantities of Nitric acid, Perchloric Acid, Hydrochloric Acid (et al), which is all fine since hydrogen, oxygen, chlorine, nitrogen, and sulphur are not reactive enough to colour the low temperature flame of a photometer. Once the solids are “digested” the test solution can be strained through filter paper to remove any remaining bits that could clog the aspirator.  Add enough deionised water to make 100ml.  This is now your testing solution. Blank Solutions Generally, you’ll need to make a “blank” solution for calibration purposes.  If during processing of your sample you added 10 ml of Perchloric Acid, and 20 ml of Nitric Acid, those will have to be added to your blank solution, too.  This eliminates crosstalk (ionic interference), keeping the results accurate. Using a 100 ml flask, pour in 50 ml of deionised water (Safety tip: always add acid to water, and never add water to acid).  Now add precisely the same quantity of any acids used to prepare your test solution to the water, and then fill the flask to the 100 ml mark.  Label this “Blank Solution”. Standard Solutions Standard solutions can be purchased in high or very high concentrations to simply your work.  High (1,000 ppm) or very high (10,000 ppm) solutions are handy, inexpensive and increase efficiency.  Very High PPM solutions are quite durable when stored in glass containers that are well sealed.  Low PPM solutions (< 100 PPM) deionise quickly and render inaccurate results so should not be stored. You can make Standard Solutions, particularly if you use a lot of them very quickly and shipping in your country is sometimes unreliable.  Let’s quickly look at a Calcium Stock solution at 1,000 PPM. Weigh 2.498 grams of calcium carbonate and place in a 1,000 ml flask.  Add 100 ml of deionised water.  While stirring or agitating, add up to 20 ml of hydrochloric acid drop-by-drop until all the solids are dissolved.  Add more deionised water up to the 1,000 ml line and you now have your 1,000 PPM Calcium Stock Solution. Knowing how much calcium carbonate is needed to obtain the calcium concentration you require is a simple look-up online if you don’t have a chart in front of you.  Many people have done this before, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel! Set up as many 100 ml flasks as needed.  In the first flask place 0.5 ml of the Stock solution, in the second 1.0 ml, in the third 1.5 ml, and 2.0 ml in the fourth (continuing or altering until your requirements are met). When each flask is then filled with deionised water to the 100 ml line, these examples will render 5 PPM, 7.5 PPM, 10.0 PPM, 12.5 PPM, and so on (respectively).  Any concentration you need for calibrating is just a simple mathematical calculation away. The Takeaway One could invest in pricey high tech equipment such as a Gas Chromatograph or full-fledged Mass Spectrometer, but unless there is a clear need for such devices, it is definitely overkill.  They take time, report on a single sample element being investigated, they take time, require large amounts of consumables for each test, and they take time! Training time for those complex machines is much longer than on a Flame Photometer, particularly one from BWB Technologies, which is automated and computerised to make the whole process easier.  A new employee can be running tests and generating results and income in less than a day! If you need to be running tests for customers in medicine or bio-medicine, pharmacology, water treatment, agriculture, commercial food packaging, or innumerable other fields, BWB Tech is here to help you be the dependable, cost effective service provider that customers come to rely on every day!  Our people are always ready to help you to become that vital in-demand service that powers so many labs around the world.  Call us…we’d love to hear from you!

Just about every student that ever sat in a chemistry class where they conducted practical experiments has had occasion to put a lump of metal in a Bunsen Burner flame and generate a colour.  This manual method can allow them to identify the metal by the colour of the flame it generates in comparison to a chart of known colours for heated metals.  It’s simple and revelatory for the student. This “Wow!” or “Neat!” moment gives teachers a chance to explain that certain types of metals, when exposed to sufficient heat will colour the flame because ions are escaping the metal in a gaseous form.  This allows the valance electrons to jump up an energy level to an unstable state, but since that is not a tenable position for them, they shed a photon to get back to ground state. These photons are at very specific wavelengths for each element.  The colours and specific frequencies of light can inform us about the material we’re examining, but it is very crude information.  Comparing two metals with similar colours can lead to misidentification, and alloys can generate nearly unidentifiable mixes of colour when using this manual method. AES, or Atomic Emission Spectroscopy, often known simply as Flame Photometry, overcomes these difficulties and gives us much more precise information about a substance by using a spectroscope.  This setup is specifically useful for non-organic alkali metals and alkali-earth metals, such as sodium, potassium, beryllium, lithium, and calcium. By detecting the specific line spectrum that identifies your test substance, you can not only see that it is present, but by measuring the intensity of the light, also see “how much” is there.  You can capture both qualitative and quantitative data simultaneously. With modern Flame Photometry equipment like our own, you can read all of the measureable metals at the same time.  You don’t need to repeat the test up to five times per sample, thus making the process much more efficient. The first two metals shown here are both present in the readout show below in the third band.  The whole process is simple, fast, and far less expensive to get the results needed than more complex techniques. The Takeaway Instrumental measurements surpass manual methods by providing fast results, more accurate results, and more sensitive results.  By that we mean you can measure down to parts per million rather than “yes” or “no”.  Further, with automation, techniques don’t have to rely on a human that may not have gotten enough sleep last night, or just got home from a party, so your results can be very consistent for high volumes of testing on large batches. Humans are great, and we’ll probably always need them, but any time you can relieve tedium and use human brains for something creative that a machine cannot do is a great day!  It may be bioassays for medical research purposes that need a human present to make judgement calls, or continuous water sampling at a sewage treatment plant.  Bother are essential functions and Flame Photometry is almost always the fastest way to a useful result!

Application Note Measurement of Potassium in Unashed Plant Leaves Return to All Applications Mason, J.L, ‘Flame Photometric Determination of Potassium in Unashed Plant Leaves’, Anal. Chem., 35, (1963), p. 874-875. This method uses a suspension of ground plant material to directly measure the potassium concentration. It eliminates the usual steps of ashing and subsequent dissolution of the resulting ash. The method was compared to alternative methods such as chemical analysis and spectrophotometric methods. Collaborative studies using a range of samples gave a mean of 1.74% potassium by this extraction technique as compared to 1.75% by alternative methods. The standard deviation of an analysis in the two different sample sets was ±0.0086 and ±0.0108. Solution and Standard Preparation: Deionised distilled water was used throughout to prepare the sample solutions. Glycerol-2-propanol Reagent was prepared by adding 200mls of 2-propanol to 125 grams of glycerol. Sample Preparation Procedure: The air-dried plant material was ground in a mill fitted with a 60-mesh screen and the resulting powder was thoroughly mixed by tumbling end-over-end in a jar less than 50¼ full for 15 minutes. A 1-gram sample of the air-dried plant material was weighed into an aluminium weighing container and dried for 48 hours. The container was reweighed and the loss due to moisture is calculated. 25mg sample of the air-dried plant material was weighed into a 50ml Erlenmeyer flask. 10ml of Glycerol-2-propanol Reagent is pipetted onto the plant material and the mixture was gently swirled to wet the powder. The wetted plant material was quantitatively transferred to a 250 ml volumetric flask and made up to volume with deionised water. This is a 1:10,000 dilution. The suspensions can be analysed by directly introducing into the flame. Prior to measurement the suspension was thoroughly mixed and then allowed to stand for 5 minutes, to allow the particles to settle. The resulting reading should be corrected for moisture content and dilution factor. This is done by accounting for moisture loss during the drying process and also the 1;10,000 dilution to return you to the value of potassium in your original sample. Testing to factor in the difference in measured concentrations across a range of different parts of the plant that the tissue sample was acquired from should be accounted for into the results so that variances between samples can be accounted for when presenting data and sampling techniques. Preparation of Standard Graph To prepare the standard solutions for this analysis, 1000mg/l stock solution was used to form 1, 2.5, 5, 7.5 and 10mg/l standards in volumetric flasks by adding 1, 2.5, 5, 7.5 and 10ml of the 100mg/l stock solution respectively. Prior to bringing these solutions up to the mark 3.75ml of the glycerol-2-propanol reagent was added to each. A blank solution containing DI water and 3.75ml of the glycerol-2-propanol reagent was used. The flame photometer was turned on and allowed to stabilise over 30 minutes prior to calibration or analysis. To calibrate the flame photometer the samples were set to multipoint/single ion calibration mode found on page 24 of the BWB Technologies Installation and Operation Manual, to measure potassium emission. Return to All Applications

The BWB Soil Flame Photometer The first flame photometer optimised for the agricultural industry. Features Specs In The Box Apps FAQs Features Simultaneous detection and display of all 3 atoms of interest “IRS” (Internal Reference Standard) available Intuitive user interface for true ease of use Display prompts step by step operation Built-in air compressor Solutions and labware included Data sharing via pc link Operator independent determination of results 4 user selectable units of measure User selectable decimal places Integrated printer uses readily available paper IQ, OQ, PQ web-based certification available Can be used with either the BWB collection cup feature or our AFHS automated sample handling system Correction of Ca for the interference from high levels of Na Highly accurate and cost effective soil analysis designed to be used in the lab or 'on the road'. Potassium is essential to plant growth, fertilisers and soil substrates have been analysed using flame photometry for decades. Building upon 2017 research papers conducted by Professor Akiharu Sasaki for the specific use of flame photometer analysis in the agricultural industry over and above other methods of analysis the BWB SOIL Flame Photometer was born. This unique instrument has been designed and developed in conjunction with various field requests and operational requirements for the specific analysis of fertilisers and soil substrates. Building upon the footprint of the award winning BWB XP instrument the SOIL offers all the benefits of our base product optimised over and beyond the requirements for analysis in the agricultural industry. The SOIL instrument offers enhanced Ca detection alongside Sodium and Potassium with the option to utilise Lithium as an internal reference standard. The ease of portability of this instrument and ‘Just add Gas’ configuration allows the instrument to be set up in the back of a van and conduct field analysis on site at various geographical locations. With a thermal printer fitted as standard, traceability for sample analysis is maintained throughout. Download Datasheet Find Your Sales Rep

Protecting the Environment Making Our Blue More Green We aim to help reduce our carbon footprint one Flame Photometer at a time. That’s why we have a number of different practices in place to make sure that our products and core business structure is as environmentally friendly as possible. Our Green Goals Using LED lighting with efficient heating systems across our manufacturing facility. ​ Utilising only 'green' energy suppliers our electricity is supplied from 100% renewable sources and our natural gas consumption is 100% carbon neutral. Environmentally friendly packaging created from pre-recycled content or utilising materials that can be easily recycled across the globe. ​​ The use of paper based packaging tape to reduce our plastic consumption and allow our cardboard boxes to be easily recycled.​​ Product design considerations such as recyclability and life cycle assessments are taken into account at the development phase of our new products. PDF To view our detailed environment policy, click here (opens in new tab). BWB's Tree Planting Promise We're proud to be the first flame photometer manufacturer to plant trees for every instrument sold. We're committing to planting trees for every model of flame photometer we sell from 01 May 2021. In addition we have an ultimate goal to plant 1000 trees for every company employee by 2025. In House Recycling Scheme We have our own in house recycling scheme for factory generated waste to ensure that our employees and the company are doing all we can to help protect and preserve the environment. United Nations 17 Goals In 2005, World Leaders agreed to 17 global goals. Seven years on, we have made progress, but there is still work to be done, and the Goals are more important than ever. At BWB Technologies, we're making meeting as many of these sustainability development goals a key priority for us in our commitment to protect the environment. We have adapted our processes and products to meet the following goals: Goal 7: Affordable & Clean Energy Ensuring we use energy suppliers that produce electricity from renewable sources and carbon neutral natural gas. In addition to LED lighting used throughout the manufacturing facility and office spaces. Goal 11: Sustainable cities and communities We encourage our employees to use public or self propelled transport where safe to do so and provide secure housed facilities for the storage of pedal bikes and scooters during the working day. Goal 13: Climate action We've selected our courier and freight agents very carefully to ensure they have long term commitments to the protection of our planet. Our goods delivered through our selected courier are carbon neutral. Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production Working with waste management companies we recycle cardboard, paper, plastic and aluminium. Our outwards goods packaging is either produced from recycled content or is easily recycled. Goal 8: Decent work and economical growth We believe in apprenticeships for the training and education of young people and support those where available within the business. We continue to support local youth organisations and further education courses through our voluntary positions in the local community. Goal 15: Life on Land We're committed to fighting deforestation by funding the planting of 1000 trees for every company employee by 2025. We're also proud to be the worlds first flame photometer manufacturer planting trees for every instrument sold.