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How to clean cuvettes without ultrasonic cleaners?
You may have a headache with the cleaning of a large capacity cuvette, because one of characteristics of a large cuvette is easily fragile, so you might worry about the cuvette cracking in the cleaning process.
We recently customized a BIG cuvette for our customer, and we’re going to attempt to use this cell to show you how we clean it.
There is no need to buy expensive cuvette-specific cleaning solutions or tools.
Our cuvette cleaning method only requires the following common items that you most likely already have in your lab.
- Box
- Absolute alcohol
Prepare to do the ethanol bath.
- Absorbent cotton
- Stick
To make the cuvette cleaning brush.
- Flannelette
- Dryer (Nonessentials)
For cuvette drying
- Cleanroom wiper
- Camera Air blower
Remove the remaining dust and cotton silk
And the cuvette we clean in this instruction is made of SCHOTT Borofloat, Fabrication Type – Powder Fused, Outer Dimension(L×W×H): 96×32×113.3mm.
So this is a tutorial on how to clean a large cuvette, and later we’ll show you a tutorial on how to clean a micro-volume cuvette.
Now, let’s just get right to the point, what is the proper procedure for cleaning the cuvettes with Absolute alcohol?
1. Prepare two POTS of anhydrous alcohol
2.Place the cuvettes in a bath of Absolute Alcohol, and Immerse it completely in the alcohol.
3. Gently scrub each inner and outer window, and corner of the cuvette with the stick wrapped with absorbent cotton.
4. After scrubbing the first pot of anhydrous alcohol, wash the colorimetric dish in the second pot of anhydrous alcohol.
5. After second alcohol cleaning, place the cuvette upside down on the flannelette pad and wait for the alcohol to dry.
6. Even ethanol is a highly volatile solvent, but if the temperature is low and you want to speed up the alcohol evaporation, a dryer can help you.
7. After drying, wipe each outer window and edge of the cupola with a cleanroom wiper.
8. Finally, blow the small cotton silk off the cell with a Camera Cleaning air blower.
Important Cuvette Cleaning Note
- Glued cells can’t be cleaned by anhydrous alcohol or will fall apart.
- Cuvettes can’t be soaked in the alcohol bath too long.
- If you want to dry the cuvette with a dryer immediately after it is soaked from the alcohol bath, please use a low temperature when drying it, or the cuvette will fall apart.
