How Does ELGA Guarantee Ultrapure Water for Your Lab Application?

27 Jan 2020

medical technologist is working with blood tube in the laboratory with ultrapure water

Guaranteeing the Quality of Ultrapure Water For Your Lab Application

Water supports our health and quality of life as a powerful reagent in a wide range of biomedical research applications. In the laboratory, ultrapure water is now more vital than ever to ensure clean data outputs from highly sensitive, advanced analytical techniques, such as liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS).

To ensure the reliability and success of your experiments, ELGA LabWater has designed innovative water purification systems that guarantee ultrapure water for your laboratory’s needs. This includes integrated ultrafiltration and microfiltration systems, real-time Total Organic Compound (TOC) monitoring, and PureSure® Technology.

Read on to find out how ELGA’s systems can protect your experiments from harmful contaminants and help to ensure the success of your research.

Ultrapure Water for Trace Element Analysis

Trace element analysis involves detecting very low (trace) concentrations of certain chemical elements in a sample. This requires highly sensitive and accurate analytical techniques, with detection resolutions being as low as parts per trillion!

But the downside of this highly sensitive detection is that the data outputs can be adversely affected by even tiny amounts of contamination by additional elements or ions. This includes causing errors in blanks and calibration samples, or artificially high sample concentrations. As such, the reliability of trace element analysis must be protected using ultrapure water that is virtually free from impurities.

Ultrapure water dispensed by ELGA’s water purification systems has been shown to be free from trace contaminants to meet the demands of instruments used for trace element analysis. You can find out more about the methodology and results of these tests by reading our free whitepaper.

How ELGA Facilitates Advanced Chromatography Applications

The improved sensitivity of widely used advanced chromatography techniques, such as LC-MS and High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), demands water of the highest purity. That’s because a variety of contaminants, including dissolved gases, particles, colloids, bacteria and organic compounds, can impair data outputs, such as producing higher background values or directly interfering with the analyses. This makes ultrapure water vital to protecting the reliability of your liquid chromatography applications.

Tests show that relying on HPLC-grade bottled water can give significantly inferior results compared to the ultrapure water dispensed by ELGA’s purification systems (you can see the methodology and results here). This may be due to contamination of the water through storage, which could introduce leachables and common solvents, as well as cause bacterial growth. As such, using water purification systems is the only way to ensure the reliability of your liquid chromatography applications.

Optimizing Ultrapure Water for Life Science Applications

Ultrapure water dispensed by ELGA’s purification systems has been shown to be suitable for a variety of life science applications, including pharmaceutical and molecular biological applications. For example, tests have shown that ultrapure water dispensed by ELGA’s PURELAB Chorus 1 and PURELAB flex 3 systems have levels of volatile organic compounds below the limits of detection by gas chromatography-MS, indicating its suitability to VOC analysis.

Also, trace levels of bacteria, pyrogens, DNase, RNase and endotoxins in Type I+ water produced by an ELGA system were all found to fall below the limit of detection by using various techniques, including filtration and ultrafiltration, UV light treatment, and regular sanitization. This highlights how ELGA’s water purification systems can optimize the outcome of procedures that rely on water free from biologically-active species, such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and in vitro fertilization, ensuring their suitability for analytical, clinical, pharmaceutical and molecular biological applications.

Ultrapure water from an ELGA Type I+ system has been found to be free of Endocrine Disrupting Compounds (EDCs), as well as phthalates. Such ultrapure water is vital for EDC monitoring via highly sensitive HPLC, as it can minimize false positives and background noise. This is particularly important given a recent drive to improve US legislation on EDC monitoring in certain products, including in pharmaceuticals and compounds used to manufacture synthetic hormones. (1)

ELGA’s 80 years’ experience in developing water purification systems has enabled it to bring innovative technologies to the laboratory that can optimize a wide range of research applications. Not only can the ultrapure water dispensed by these systems ensure the utmost confidence in the quality of your reagents and the reliability of your experiments, but accurate and low volume dispensing methods can improve the preservation and purity of your water supply.

If you’d like to find out more about how ELGA’s systems guarantee your water is of the highest purity for your application needs, read our whitepaper today to help drive forward the success and impact of your research.