dispatches from Analytica 2014
KNF to evaporate the competition
The RC900 Rotary Evaporator includes a remote control unit, one button functions for tasks such as changing flasks, adjustable rotation speeds and dynamic temperature control.
The firm is a manufacturer of lab pumps and systems and decided to go into instrumentation in the last few years.
Starting base
James Findlay, marketing manager laboratory products, said they are a known lab supplier in the industry already which helps their case in entering the evaporator market.
“The reasons for that are we supply pumps and systems to laboratories for rotary evaporators but we always had to team up with another companies’ product and we felt we had good experience,” he told FoodQualityNews.com.
“We went to our customers and asked them what they wanted and we asked them the kind of things they had trouble with and we tried to use our engineering skills to overcome those problems for them.”
In the food industry there is a lot of testing for safety and to prove different types of mixes, he said.
“For us it’s the precision that the product offers and the ease of cleanliness we think is important in the food industry too.
“If you can remove liquid in a test laboratory in the food industry and you want to extract say water from that source and concentrate it very quickly, a rotary evaporator could do that.
“But, of course, in general chemistry research and additive research this kind of instrument is very useful.”
Building up a reputation
Findlay said the challenge is to build up a reputation of quality in the rotary evaporation market.
“We have it in pumps and going out to the market we found that a lot of the users of rotary evaporators had the same issues and some of those issues were difficult to overcome," he said.
“We felt that we could overcome those problems with our R&D and we’ve been testing the product in the field in pharma labs and at universities for two years now and we got very good feedback.
“If you are pulling out a particular solution and you can then carry on continue extracting that solution in different mixes. What we can do is we can record everything that is processed by the rotary evaporator onto a laptop or a PC and then it is really for future analysis in the laboratory depending on what you are doing.”
Beta-test of system
Dr Alexander Scherer, chair of organic chemistry at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, has beta-tested the new system in his laboratory.
“We exposed the RC900 to real laboratory conditions, such as corrosive and aggressive solvents, and made further suggestions on how to make the system even easier to operate," he said.
“KNF Lab took these suggestions on board and the result is a high-performance system that features a user-friendly, intuitive touch screen and automated functions which really make life easier, helping to guarantee highly efficient and safe operation.”
