Preparation Equipment
EcoCore has a range of traditional sample prep equipment such as sieves, balances, shakers, centrifuges, grinders, ovens, furnaces, and incubators.
Sample prep equipment
- Sieves: most common opening sizes from 8 mm to 20 um
- Drying ovens:
- Two large (60 cu ft) and four small (6 cu ft)
- Temperature range: ambient to 200°C
- Lyophilizer: Labconco FreeZone 6 Liter Console Freeze Dry System
- Grinders (for plant/soil material):
- One ball mill for soil samples < 30 grams; can grind up to 15 samples/hr
- One roller mill for soil samples, 95 sample capacity
- One bench top Whiley mills for herbaceous vegetation samples (1-100 grams)
- One floor model Whiley mill for large vegetation samples including small woody samples
- One Retsch grinder for mixed soil/vegetation samples (special usage fees may apply)
- Centrifuges:
- High Capacity: 6 liter (6 x 1L bottles) up to 5000 g – can also use up to 30-50 ml tubes
- High speed: 14 x 50 ml tubes or 6 x 250 ml bottles up to 30,000 g
- Medium capacity: 4 x 750 ml capacity up to 4000 g – can also use up to 20-50 ml tubes or 2 x 96 well plates
- Muffle furnaces:
- 2 cu ft capacity temperature range 100 to 1000°C with ventilation hood to perform loss on ignition analyses/ashing
- 2 – 3 cu ft capacity for baking glassware for critically clean applications
- Incubators:
- A constant temperature room at 25°C can accommodate hundreds of samples for extended time periods
- Two small (~2 cu. ft) heat-only incubators can maintain 25-40+°C, one medium ( ~15 cu.ft.) can maintain -10-+20°C, and one large (~20 cu. ft.) refrigerated incubator can maintain ~15-40°C for shorter time periods
- 2 x 4 cu ft capacity refrigerated and shaking
- 2 x 3 cu ft heat only shaking
- Shakers
- 2 Orbital, one for 125 ml flasks and 1 for 250 ml flasks. May be configured of limited numbers of other sized glassware
- 2 Reciprocal
- Microbalance: up to 6 gram-capacity. Primarily used for isotope sample preparation
- A high capacity bead beater for extractions of nucleic acids or proteins
- Chloroform fumigation chamber with vacuum pump
- N2 drying/concentrating system
- Centrivap – centrifugal vacuum and heat solvent evaporation system with rotors for 15 ml tubes and 96 well plates