Articles Archive for June 2012

The ISO particle characterization technical committee is actually a subcommittee…
SC4 of ISO TC24 being that subcommittee. TC24 is “particle characterization including sieving”. SC4 is that part that isn’t concerned with sieves. It is the most active subcommittee of TC24 with 55 published standards and 34 in development. This subcommittee has been responsible over the years for standards such as 13320 (laser diffraction), 13321 and 22412 (DLS) and 14488 (sampling). Not to mention 13322-1 and 13322-2 (static and dynamic image analysis). As you’d expect it’s made up mainly of a bunch …

Malvern Germany ‘pushed out the boat’ last week by supporting both the huge Achema exhibition in Frankfurt as well as the in-house Hosokawa Micron Alpine event in Augsburg.
There was plenty of process equipment to see and the event reminded me that many of our most important customers live in this large scale powder processing environment. It’s what it’s all about really!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
More than 300 visitors plus some Bavarian sunshine and a beer tent!

Although I’ve now organized half a dozen Achemas and close to 40 exhibitions in total, Achema is still exciting for me, being the biggest chemistry, mechanical engineering, and now biological engineering show in Europe with a worldwide audience.
Preparation has kept me busy for the last few weeks and even last weekend setting up the stand. The whole team was looking forward to Monday morning when the show started. My nerves normally disappear when the stand looks good and the first visitors arrive.
We left the hotel early on Monday morning to …

Characterizing hydrogels is an area that we are seeing a rapid increase of interest, primarily due to their use in the development of novel biomaterials and in various biomedical applications. Hydrogels are a class of gels – materials with a three dimensional network that spans the volume of a liquid medium – in which water is the dispersion medium.
These soft, pliable materials have the ability to absorb significant quantities of water – as with naturally-occurring materials that play a vital part in all forms of life – making them compatible …

This spring, my wife and I took a vacation to Hawaii during which one of the highlights involved looking at the night sky near the top of Mauna Kea. Mauna Kea is the tallest peak on the big island towering over 13000 feet in the air.  It is known around the world as one of the best places on the planet to star gaze and numerous high powered telescopes are stationed there looking into the depths of the universe.

High above the clouds on a bumpy, gravel, winding mountain road, the …

Chemical & Engineering News is a magazine published by the American Chemical Society, for ACS members, and aimed at serving the chemical, life sciences and laboratory worlds. Founded in 1876, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society with an astonishing ~ 160,000 members worldwide (see wikipedia for additional details on origin, activites, current journals and magazines).  Hosted by C&EN, Dr. Wei-Sen Wong, Malvern’s Manager of Analytical Services in Houston, TX, will present a live webinar on novel multi-detector techniques for the characterization of polymers that traditionally have been challenging.
Gel Permeation Chromatography (GPC) is one of …

It might be micro by name, but the Zetasizer µV certainly is not micro by nature!  Offering no fewer than three analysis modes, the Zetasizer µV could be one of the most powerful tools in your analytical arsenal. So, if you are keen on taking a multi-faceted approach to the characterization of antibody structure, stability and purity: read on!
Recently, I used the Zetasizer µV to characterize an ‘off the shelf’ antibody sample in three different ways and in a total analysis time of less than 24 hours.  Starting the analyses …

As part of my job I write reports for the analysis of customer samples on a regular basis. This type of applications analysis is a very important stage in our dialog with a customer. They have sent the samples for analysis as they are looking for guidance regarding the viability of using a particular technology to meet their needs. Consequently we aim to provide full application reports that are clearly laid out and tailored to these individual requirements. So depending on the complexity of the samples and the length of …