GENERAL LAB GLASS
Laboratory Glassware
Laboratories of every type rely on a wide range of glassware in an equally wide range of conditions & roles. The containment & transport of acids, solvents, products & mixtures is a constant task requiring a reliable, resilient material. Beakers, flasks, syringes, pressure vessels, media bottles and so on of all sizes become critical to the success of both R&D and on-going production. Apical offers a wide range of glassware for the bench through pilot scale to support hobbyists, start-ups, developmental labs and pharmaceutical campaigns.
Types of Glass Materials:
Borosilicate glass:
In the laboratory, the most common glass material is Borosilicate. Due to its ability to withstand high heat & thermal shock, with temperature deltas exceeding 70C, it also has a number of applications in industrial equipment and food preparation. Borosilicate’s clarity, lack of porosity, low expansion coefficient, corrosion-resistance and deep vacuum compatibility makes it, uniquely, the ideal tool of the chemist.
This material is going to be found on the bench all the way up into plant scale processing operations.
Simple flasks for mixing and media bottles for storage are a common sight.
Glass jacketed reactors, one of the most versatile tools in organic & inorganic chemistry.
Distillation columns
Mixer-settlers
Solvent swaps via flow chemistry
Quality glass will last decades under tough conditions, offering operators a type of resiliency, chemical inertness & risk mitigation not offered by other materials. The development of glass-lined vessels & hybrids speaks to that directly.
Be aware that some liquids will damage borosilicate significantly: Hydrofluoric and Phosphoric acid, as well as strong caustic solutions.
Quartz glass:
This material is made in two types, fused quartz & fused silica, and used particularly for their resistance to extreme high temperatures and transparency along unique portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. With these ranges varying based on grade, purity, manufacturing style and water content.
Fused Quartz is manufactured by melting high-purity, naturally-occurring quartz crystals made by melting high-purity, naturally-occurring quartz or its ground sand under vacuum or varying levels of heat and gas types. The result is a highly transparent (including UV & near-IR) and heat resistant material used in laboratories, lighting, extreme-condition windows, laser development, optics & fiber communication.
Fused Silica is produced using various sources of high-purity silica sand and chemical precursors across a number of grades. Opacity due to water content along with small air bubbles trapped in the glassware is the most significant issue with these materials and a synthetic approach can allow for reduced contamination and better transparency.