The Dumas method has several advantages over the Kjeldahl method: it is much faster, with much lower operating costs, no real safety issues, and no toxic waste produced. However, there is a debate over which of the two main approaches to the Dumas method is better: a vertical or a horizontal combustion furnace. Determined to settle the question on which method is more precise and offers the most advantages, LECO chemists analyzed many sample types in both an FP828 and an FP928.
For more information and a detailed breakdown of the results and a look at more of the samples used in this experiment, read Michael Jakob's article in the September 2021 issue of eFOOD-Lab International.
Microplastics are a ubiquitous presence in the world, found from Arctic snow to Antarctic ice and everywhere in between. There are trillions of microplastic particles floating on surface water, and everyone from infants to adults are presumed to be ingesting anywhere from dozens to tens of thousands of these particles every day.
Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) first started in the early 20th century, and while the technology has advanced, the basic principles remain the same. With TGA, the rate of change of reactions in the chemical and physical properties of materials as functions of temperature or time is what is used to assess the properties of the sample materials. Most TGA these days is done with either micro TGAs (using milligram-size samples) or macro TGAs (using gram-size samples).
The first Time-of-Flight (TOF) mass spectrometer was proposed in 1946, and the design has been refined and iterated upon every since.
With an unlimited mass range visible in each spectrum and a high spectral generation speed, the advantages of TOF mass spectrometry were immediately clear. Though the instruments improved, they did eventually hit physical limitations that restricted the resolving power. More work had to be done.
All the tricks of the trade won't be enough if your instruments can't handle the speed. LECO's Pegasus® line is designed to take full advantage of the speed of TOFMS analyses without sacrificing the sensitivity you need, and our StayClean® Ion Source means you never have to slow down to clean out your engine.
Automated moisture or moisture/ash determination with a primary loss on drying method for replacing the slow labor intensive, manual air oven method is ideal for most applications in the foods, feeds, and milling products industry. LECO‘s cutting-edge thermal gravimetric analysers, TGM800 and TGA801, are industry leaders in every field and run simultaneously for 10 up to 38 samples! Flexible method settings, automation, and hardware capabilities deliver an automated analysis process while requiring only the manual measurement of the initial sample mass, for maximum productivity in your lab.
LECO instruments offer piece of mind for energy companies validating for quality and compliance by measuring for moisture, ash, volatile content, and loss-on-ignition as well as determination of gross calorific value of various organic materials.
Simple entering of your samples into macro crucibles, easy and convenient, no need for touching the sample after starting the instrument.
Learn more about our solutions for thermogravimetric moisture / ash analysis and read our Application Notes. In the following, you are going to find a content compendium according to moisture / ash determintation. We kindly ask you to submit our form. Afterwards you‘ll get access to all the files.
Please complete the form to get access to all App Notes.
Please complete the form to get access to all App Notes.
"Moisture and Total Solid Determination of Milk-Based Products Comparing Automated Thermogravimetric and Air Oven Loss-on-Drying Techniques"
by Mason Marsh, Jenifer Laurin, Jeffery Gast (LECO Corporation, St. Joseph, MI USA
Please complete the form to get access to all posters.
"Direct Moisture Determination of Various Grain/Seed Products Comparing Automated Thermogravimetric Method and the Oven Drying Methods used by the Southern African Grain Laboratory"
by Jason van Rooyen (LECO Africa), Marie Bothma (Southern African Grain Laborator), and Marlize Hammes (Southern African Grain Laborator)
Please complete the form to get access to all posters.
"Determination of Moisture/Loss on Drying in Cannabis by Various Analytical Techniques"
by Jeffery Gast, Adam Darling, Lloyd Allen (LECO Corporation, St. Joseph, MI USA)
Please complete the form to get access to all posters.
"Moisture Determination of Meat Comparing Automated Thermogravimetric and Air Oven Loss-on-Drying Techniques"
by Jenifer Laurin, Gabriela Schmidt (LECO Corporation, St. Joseph, MI USA), Michael Jakob, Lloyd Allen (LECO EATC, Berlin, Germany)
CPlease complete the form to get access to all posters.
If you want to learn more about our Products and Solutions for Moisture Analysis, book a free ticket to our Virtual Trade Show, or schedule an Online Demo for a deeper insight in our instruments.
Our latest online presentations for MOSH / MOAH Analysis are now available as an On-Demand session. With these fundamentals you will learn all the ins and outs on the LC–GC coupling, GC×GC and Time-of-Flight MS to be able to determine MOSH and MOAH in food products.
So many factors go into the quality and characterisation of plants and biomass, but many thermogravimetric analyses take so much time. Drying, ashing, and weighing multiple samples takes effort and care just to control for atmospheric effects, much less to actually get precise results that can then be used to analyse the quality and structure of the plants. LECO's TGA801 is an automated thermogravimetric analyser designed to take the time out of the testing.
Our latest Online Workshop is now available as an On-Demand session. In this workshop the LECO Inorganic product line together with interesting applicational examples is presented. CHNOS analysis of steel, semiconductors, inorganic materials, powder metals and others are discussed. The theoretical lectures are followed by a practical demo where the instruments are demonstrated and some typical samples are analysed. A questions and answers session finalises the workshop.
Unsere Referenzmaterialien sind „Made by LECO“ und im eigenen zertifizierten Labor geprüft. Wir produzieren Referenzmaterialien in CRM Qualität. Das Labor ist durch A2LA akkreditiert.
From raw foods to final consumer-ready products, LECO instruments analyse the quality of and nutritional value of dairy products, meats, cereals, poultry, beer, and wine.
Der TGM800 bietet eine hochpräzise, automatisierte Lösung zur Feuchtigkeitsbestimmung und ersetzt die langsame, mühsame, traditionelle Trocknungsverlusttechnik durch eine automatisierte Primärmethode. Das Design bietet eine Reihe zeitsparender Funktionen, z. B. die automatische Messung von bis zu 16 Proben gleichzeitig mit optionaler Erkennung des Trocknungszeitpunkts und eine intuitive Touchscreen-Software mit flexiblen Methodeneinstellungen.
Whatever your sample preparation workflow requirements are, harness the power of LECO GC×GC & TOF technology to solve the complex challenges of MOSH / MOAH Analysis.
With these fundamentals you will learn all the ins and outs on the LC–GC coupling, GC×GC and Time-of-Flight MS to able to determine MOSH and MOAH in food products. Please register for our presentations.
The Multidimensional Chromatography Workshop draws experts in this exciting field to share and discuss their research. The informal workshop also provides an excellent opportunity for those interested in multidimensional chromatography to learn more about this unique analytical technique. Research topics include advancements in multidimensional chromatography technology and applications of this highly selective chromatographic approach.
Total sulfur value is an important characterisation measurement for coal, coke, fuel materials, and a wide variety of other organic materials. It is considered to be part of the ultimate analysis parameters (determination of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, and ash with oxygen calculation by difference). The total sulfur value is a primary parameter used for assessing the quality of a fuel, calculating coal and coke preparation and cleaning processes, and the emissions potential of the fuel. The SC832 Series will bring productivity, precision, and progress to your lab when determining the sulfur and carbon content of your samples.
Visit our LECO VIRTUAL TRADE SHOW to learn more about our expertise in the fields of energy and fuels.
The past year with the rise of Covid-19 around the Earth has been a challenge to all of us. See how our European subsidiaries dealt with the pandemic around Europe and how our customer support and other services adapted to these new situations in the different countries. Click on the countries to see our personal experiences!
If you need any further information about how LECO operates during the Corona pandemic or to schedule your personal appointment with us, click on the contact button.
The start of the years begins with the usual enthusiasm, targets set, goals to achieve and strategy to achieve them. I remember being in Dusseldorf for a managers meeting on March the 3rd. Life was still normal, and the word ’lockdown’ was only ever heard on a Friday when my children were watching Wrestling. We were able to travel, visit restaurants and have a beer without the constraints of the facemasks, social distancing and track and trace apps. Life was normal. Within a month the world changed – lockdowns, stay-at-home, work from home, stay safe.
As the LECO customers adapted to this new way of life due to COVID, so did we. Our sales force worked from home and like never before used this relatively unheard-of platform called Microsoft TEAMS to interact with customers.
Our service team continued to work throughout the pandemic with the new additions to their LECO uniform. LECO face masks and gloves. And of course, let’s not forget the bottles of hand sanitiser. As well as remote selling was used, remote service support came to the forefront. Both sales and service teams adapted to continue the high level of support that has become a custom with LECO.
LECO UK has been able to adapt and continued to support our customers while keeping ourselves and customers safe. Let hope moving into 2021 we can get back to some sort of previous normality. The vaccines are coming and there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel but for the moment we continue with the slogan of Hands – Face – Space.
Michael Reaney, UK Sales Director, LECO Instruments UK Ltd.
The first picture shows our engineer Yuri Laptev during a Pegasus 4D service visit to Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology.
The second one was taken at the Analytika exhibition in Moscow last year.
Gulnara Shaidullina, Ph.D., Separation Science Sales Engineer, LECO Russia and CIS
It has for sure been a challenge even though Sweden have had less restrictions. When crossing borders to Norway, Denmark and Finland our service technicians have sometimes had to take Covid-19 tests before. We have been fortunate, no one in our team have been infected as we know of. We haven’t even been to Iceland since the start of the pandemic. Our service technicians try to go by their own cars to customers, which have meant drives up to 14 hours single way.
On the sales side it has of course been a challenge in other ways. But with ‘Teams’, online demos and Virtual Trade show our sales team have connected with our customers in the best way possible. We only attended one real trade show since the start of the pandemic – LabDays in Copenhagen – but the attendance was of course quite thin…
Lennart Schwartz, Ph.D, Sales Director Nordic Region, LECO Nordic AB
Since 14th of March of 2020, and the declaration of State of alarm in Spain, Leco Instrumentos started to work in a new different way, adapting to the new scenario of pandemic. All the employees completed a training course regarding the new risk at work and the personal protective equipment for COVID-19:
So far, everything was normal… But LECO Spain had to face a new challenge – to move to a new office. It was a hard task cleaning the old facilities and open boxes – a lot of boxes. And in times of COVID we had to consider to organise small groups at the office working together. Minimising risks was a priority despite of the fact that we needed to be operative in the new facility in a short time. The collaboration of the Tres Cantos-based employees was essential.
But the result made the effort worthwhile! And the Spanish LECO team is ready for 2021!
Leticia García, Commercial Director, Spain & Portugal
From the perspective of the German Service Centre, a Corona routine has emerged throughout the past months. Customer demands increased - ever so often our service engineers are only allowed to enter labs after presenting a negative Corona test result. Of course, this requires special logistics in scheduling. In addition, there are different Corona rules the federal states of Germany and abroad, which makes planning much more difficult. But our colleagues adapt, as the pictures show, and as our colleague Manuel Lindemann describes below.
"When the pandemic really took off from March / April 2020, I first noticed a lot of uncertainty among both myself and the customers. There were many questions: What is Corona? What happens if I fall ill? How will this affect my work? Will the customers still let me enter their lab? How will LECO react? Now, almost a year later, there are still some questions left to be answered, but as humans we adapt and get used to the new circumstances – positive and negative.
in the beginning of the pandemic, I remember waiting for hours in 100m-long queues between lorry drivers and other visitors at a company and having to wait for the gatekeeper to let me pass. And there were customers who had their "special" views. From "Corona doesn't exist” to “You don't need the mask here" and "We have an internal lockdown, you can't get in" – it was all there.
After one year many questions remain unanswered, but some questions have already become obsolete. What remained as well, unfortunately, are the waiting times at customers‘ sites. Simply walking in and working on a unit is no longer possible. "Where are you from? Have you had contact with infected people? What does your Corona Warn app say? Do you have any symptoms?” ...And so on. What I've also noticed is that social interaction often gets left behind these days unfortunately – be it a casual conversation or just a gesture that disappears behind the mask. But, hopefully that is to come back soon.
But LECO protect their employees very well and always has an open ear for questions – a solution will be found together. All in all, I think we have organised ourselves very well and will probably make it through the rest of the pandemic."
Manuel Lindemann & Thomas Post, LECO Instrumente GmbH Deutschland
After a beginning of year full of prospects and projects, the arrival of Covid-19 took us by surprise. Italy was the first European nation to be massively attacked by the virus, the first cases recorded were in the north of the country, particularly in Lombardy, the region where the headquarters of the LECO branch in Italy are located.
To counter the spread of the virus, the entire country was placed in the "red zone" and operations were greatly reduced to adapt to the new situation.
The pandemic has led us to cover our faces with masks, but it has not managed to extinguish our enthusiasm and we hope that 2021, together with the vaccine, gives us the opportunity to resume showing our smiles.
Rita M. Monfredini, LECO Italy S.R.L.
We’re dealing with the pandemic problem in a similar way, like the rest of the world:
Tomasz Stójkowski, Sales Director LECO Poland & Baltics
Since February 2020 we provide an Online Demo Service at our European Application & Technology Center in Berlin, giving customers an insight into our LECO products and laboratory processes conveniently from their desks and without the need to travel. For our Online Demo Service, a good preparation is required to meet our's and our customers’ high standards.
Preparation
Demo Day
Get in touch with us to arrange an individual online appointment for you!
Due to the Corona pandemic, numerous trade shows and events are being cancelled or postponed where we would have liked to welcome or customers as a guest. To give you the opportunity to stay in touch with LECO, we have organised our LECO Virtual Trade Show. Our specialists invite you to get to know our solutions for various application fields and markets in a personal meeting.
Visit our registration website and book your free ticket today. Your local sales partner will schedule a meeting and guide you through our exhibition and introduce you to our solutions for your lab.
GET YOUR FREE TICKET
It's that time of year again, when holiday songs play 24/7 on the radio and people start wondering what, exactly, frankincense and myrrh are and why they make good gifts. LECO placed these two oils in a Pegasus BT 4D to see the difference.
Frankincense (from the boswellia tree) and myrrh (from the commiphora tree) are both resins which are commonly used as perfumes and incense and have been for thousands of years. Essential oils extracted from these resins can be analyzed using gas chromatography, which is precisely what the scientists at LECO did.
By extending the analysis to a second dimension using the GC×GC analysis of the Pegasus BT 4D, even more information can be gleaned from the samples extracted from these substances. GC×GC analysis also inherently produces structured chromatograms where chemically similar analytes tend to elute in ordered bands through the GC×GC separation space. This provides context for identification and allows for rapid visual characterization of the compound classes.
For a more detailed breakdown of the analysis of these oils and how the GC×GC separation provides a huge advantage in the characterisation and comparison of these samples, fill in the form and check out our application note.
Where Theory Meets Hands-On Excellence
The LECO UK Training Center offers the opportunity for skilled development with applied learning on your LECO instrument(s). We are committed to empowering our customers through education and practical training.
Our dedicated customer training team, with their vast expertise, is committed to empowering you to maximize the capabilities of your LECO instrumentation.
Whether you're a beginner or an experienced – We offer educational opportunities to optimize your experience with a diverse range of LECO analytical instruments.
Dive into comprehensive training sessions and hands-on practical sessions, covering essential topics from theory to advanced features.
For any questions or queries, please contact us.
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Modern building materials are not just stones and mortar. For all of its benefits, cement is a surprisingly complex mixture of a balance of ingredients such as lime, silica, alumina and more. The quality and strength of this and other building materials is determined from their chemical make-ups. Join LECO’s experts as they explain how chemical and moisture analyses of cement and other building materials can be performed quickly, efficiently, and accurately.
LECO delivers perfect solutions for your samples such as cement and clinker, raw materials, environmental samples, fuels and alternative fuels as well as lime, gypsum and quick lime. Check out our product portfolio for cement and building material analysis including the CHN828, SC832, RC612, AC600, and TGA801 and see how we can empower your results.
In the following, you are going to find a content compendium. We kindly ask you to submit our form. Afterwards you‘ll get access to all the files.
If you want to learn more about our products and solutions for cement and building materials, book a free ticket to our Virtual Trade Show or schedule an Online Demo for a deeper insight in our instruments.
Did you catch our recent article on Food Navigator? Nitrogen content in food materials is necessary to measure when determining the total protein content. This measurement of nitrogen content can be performed using a classical wet chemistry method, but this tends to be a slow and tedious process. The combustion-based Dumas method has gained popularity in recent years as it significantly increases laboratory productivity. Yet when the sample has a low level of nitrogen it can be challenging to analyse. Examples of these hard-to-analyse samples include dry corn starch, NDIN filter bags, nutritional drinks, and beer. How can the combustion method be optimised to accommodate these lower-level nitrogen samples?
Our latest Online Workshop is now available as an On-Demand session. With the introduction of the LECO CHN 828 Series another Cornerstone® elemental analyser has been added to the LECO portfolio. The workshops topics were designed to show proceedings in organic elemental CHNS analysis with LECO Instruments. CHNS determination from low sample weights up to 2g with highest precision and accuracy in many organic and inorganic matrices. High throughput and low costs per analysis for a modern laboratory. Register to watch the presentations now.
For many years LECO have been partners in the research / development AND quality control of catalyst samples. We have many customers from (petro-) chemistry, exhaust catalysts, and other fields where catalysts play an important role. Check out our product portfolio for catalyst analysis…
Metabolomics presents challenges for both the analytical methods used and the data reduction required to interpret the results. No single analytical technique can be used for complete characterisation of the metabolome, and no metabolome has been completely characterised. However, GC-MS provides an established method to analyse the primary metabolome, whereas LC investigates the secondary and tertiary metabolites.
Soil is the material where corn grows. This sounds to be a simple sentence, but keep in mind, that a big part our food is directly or indirectly coming from plants that are sown, grown and harvested in agricultural soil. For modern agriculture especially when including environmental concerns, the chemical analysis delivers very important parameters for a complete characterisation of soil. LECO is the specialist for CNS and moisture/ash analysis in soil, as well as for Carbon species analysis like TOC/TIC or according to EN 17505 TOC400, ROC, ROC900 and TIC 900.
The rise of omics has been a hot topic in our group for the past few years – in part because our own expertise aligns somewhat with the needs of these fields. Metabolomics is then particularly challenging for the separation science community, demanding the application of high-end iterations of various techniques, including LC, GC, MS, and NMR. In fact, when it comes to metabolomics, most analytical tools have a “seat at the technique table” – after all, multimodality is the only way to make sense of such high sample complexity.
An Article by Pierre-Hugues Stefanuto, Delphine Zanella, and Jean-François Focant
From cancer to diabetes to the recent rise of COVID-19, we will all likely come face-to-face with a threat to our health. Contemporary medicine has ever-improving tools to identify and combat diseases, but there are gaps – in speed, in invasiveness, in coverage, in access, and in accuracy. Can we do better? And how can we ensure that new approaches provide the same level of diagnostic potential as those currently in service?
Jane Hill, Associate Professor of Engineering, and Billy Boyle, CEO of Owlstone Medical, explain how their research in the area of breath analysis is opening new diagnostic doors.
With the introduction of the LECO CHN 828 Series another Cornerstone® elemental analyser has been added to the LECO portfolio. The workshops topics are designed to show proceedings in organic elemental CHNS analysis with LECO Instruments. CHNS determination from low sample weights up to 2g with highest precision and accuracy in many organic and inorganic matrices. High throughput and low costs per analysis for a modern laboratory. Further information can be found on our registration page.
Do you struggle with analyzing the quality and composition of your steel? How easily can you measure the surface hardness or fluctuating carbon concentrations? Are you confident with what your tools are telling you? Learn how LECO has been expanding what is possible when it comes to measuring steel with this free series of webinars.
Find out how the use of Comprehensive Two-Dimensional Gas Chromatography (GC×GC) with Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (TOF-MS) demonstrates excellent matrix-analyte and analyte-analyte separation quality of a high number of target pesticides, at high sensitivity.
The LECO Pegasus BT 4D was used to develop a robust and straightforward quantification workflow adhering to SANTE requirements.
LECO hosted the LA2PC // Analytical Applications Poster Competition with the aim of improving our understanding and knowledge of LECO users’ work and research. This was a great opportunity to learn more from our users and introduce their work with LECO instruments to a wider base. LECO is proud that so many excellent posters were submitted. All entries are displayed in our poster gallery.
Who will benefit? Any supervisor or chemist working in the analytical lab looking to get more information from GC-MS technology, struggling with complex samples, or seeking advantages beyond the same old GC-MS performance. If you have a GC-MS analytical challenge, you’ll want to see what you’ve been missing! You will learn from key opinion leaders in the field of GC and GC×GC technology as to how these solutions can seamlessly fit into your workflow and benefit your laboratory.
From raw materials till finished products, different industries trust LECO rapid and accurate analysers measuring quality and strength on every step of materials transformation process. Learn more about Carbon and Sulfur Analysis by Combustion with the LECO CS744 and CS844, Oxygen/Nitrogen/Hydrogen Detection with the ONH836, Oxygen/Nitrogen determination by Inert Gas Fusion with the ON736, and multi-phase Carbon and Water determination with the RC612.
The article introduces the new CHN828 and describes the advantages resulting from combustion in pure oxygen and the proven aliquot ballast principle. The fast cycle times for CHNS and pure N determination are also described.
Dr. Ralf Löscher, Vice President of LECO Europe, talks to Thomas Gröger and Dr. Jürgen Schnelle-Kreis from the Helmholtz Zentrum München – the German Research Center for Environmental Health to learn about the impact of aerosols on our everyday life and health and gain some background information on their work.
We are proud to announce the successful delivery and installation of a unique apparatus set at our unique customer. NOFER INSTITUTE OF OCCUPATIONAL MEDICINE in Łódź, which includes the BIOLOGICAL MONITORING AND ENVIRONMENT DEPARTMENT, headed by Prof. Dr. hab. n. med. Wojciech Wąsowicz is a thriving and opinion-forming center, participating in many national and international programs.
The recent eSeminar series on SepScience.com covering LECO’s solutions for Food and Environmental Analysis is now available as an on-demand version. The talks feature topics around the challenging field of FOOD analysis as well as the ENVIRONMENTAL analysis of the thousands of chemicals present in our air, land and water supplies.
How efficient is your workflow when it comes to food samples? Are you sure you're seeing everything your sample has to offer? Learn how LECO has been expanding what is possible when it comes to food safety analyses with this free series of webinars.
All our webinars will be approximately 30 minutes long with a Q&A session at the ends. Register for any or all that interest you!
Jennifer Laurin, Gabriela Schmid, Michael Jakob, and Lloyd Allen talk about moisture determination of meat. The article refers to the advantages of the automated moisture determination.
eFoodLab // Issue 02/2020 // by Jennifer Laurin, Gabriela Schmid,
Michael Jakob, and Lloyd Allen
An accurate determination of moisture content in milk products provides important information related to the food quality and safety (texture, taste, microbial stability). Moisture is also a key variable used to calculate a product’s purity, yield, and /or resulting constituent analysis on a dry basis.
The TGM800 provides the user with flexible method settings, automation, and hardware capabilities that maximises moisture determination efficiency, productivity, and analytical performance. This is accomplished while offering the ability to meet the primary loss-on-drying method requirements for sample.
Please join us for two upcoming eSeminars on SepScience.com. We present how state of the art LECO GC-TOF-MS and GC×GC-TOF-MS technologies can dramatically enhance your applications for Food Analysis (9th June) and Environmental (11th June).
Click to register now!
Today, 20th May, is UN World Honey Bee Day. The honey bee is an important pollinator species that contributes an estimated $15 billion a year to the US economy through crop pollination and £690 million to the UK economy. Honey bees are also important wild pollinators, and play a key role in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services in many ecosystems.