Latest News and Application Notes

Scorched Soils: Determining Moisture Content with the TGM800 and TGA801

June 16, 2023

Moisture levels in soil are important to know when growing plants. In addition to being a necessary component of photosynthesis, the moisture in soil acts as a carrier for a plant's essential nutrients, such as nitrogen and carbon. Knowing the moisture content of your soil enables you to properly balance the nutrient density and correct for moisture issues. Traditional manual drying methods have been lab-tried and -tested, but they can feel like relics of the past as today's lab is tasked to do more with less time.

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Guaranteed Analysis: Moisture and Ash

May 26, 2023

Unlike the detailed list of nutritional requirements for human food, pet food in North America must only report on four main values in their Guaranteed Analysis on the label: protein, fat, fiber, and moisture. Additional nutrients must be included if they are called out specifically on the label, but manufacturers can also voluntarily add more nutrients to provide consumers with more information or further demonstrate the nutritional value of their products. Surprisingly, one such voluntary "nutrient" that frequently appears on labels is "ash."  However, the presence of ash in the Guaranteed Analysis does not indicate the presence of literal ash in the food; instead, it explains the process through which the mineral content is determined.

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Automating Better Water: The TGA and Water Treatment

May 13, 2022

Clean, safe water is a cornerstone of life itself, and the ability to properly process and treat wastewater is a key component in environmental preservation. As such, water treatment plants such as Veritas S. p. A (Veneziana Energia Risorse Idriche Territorio Ambiente e Servizi) are a critical part of water infrastructure, and the analytical methods they use are a critical part of water treatment.

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Thermogravimetric: Automated

April 1, 2022

Traditional thermogravimetric analyses such as loss-on-drying or loss-on-ignition techniques are long processes with many manual steps as samples are measured and transferred and re-measured to determine the loss. Every touch increases labor requirements and the chance for operator error. But there's a better way.

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Revising the Standards: Volatile Matter in Coal and Biofuels

October 15, 2021

Coal and other biofuels are no different from every other substance that can be bought and sold: the quality of the material plays a huge role in the determination of the price. With coal and other solid fuels, the amount of volatile matter is the main factor in quality, as this determines the burning rates of the fuel. While the volatile matter value does rely on the type of fuel and moisture content of said fuel being tested, it also varies based on the heating rates used in the tests to determine the value.

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Building Strong Foundations Webinars

September 3, 2021

No matter where you are in the urban landscape, you are never more than a few feet from cement. Cement forms the basis of virtually the entire world’s infrastructure. It is an impressively cheap binder that enables a wide variety of building materials. Despite its ubiquity, it is a surprisingly complex mixture of a balance of ingredients such as lime, silica, alumina and more. Knowing what is in your cement is a fundamental check of its quality and strength.

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Gypsum and the TGA: Analyzing FGD Solids

July 23, 2021

The thermogravimetric analyses of the TGA801 and its predecessors can do more than measure organic materials. With its ability to handle large, gram-sized samples, the TGA801 has become an invaluable tool for the monitoring of industrial byproducts, such as flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) solids.

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The TGA: Macro and Micro

May 21, 2021

Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) first started in the early 20th century, and while the technology has advanced, the basic principles remain the same. With TGA, the rate of change of reactions in the chemical and physical properties of materials as functions of temperature or time is what is used to assess the properties of the sample materials. Most TGA these days is done with either micro TGAs (using milligram-size samples) or macro TGAs (using gram-size samples).

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Automated Analysis with bilacon® and the TGA801

April 30, 2021

200630_TGA801_450pxRunning and maintaining a full analytical laboratory can be more cost than a company can afford, but what other options are there for a small business looking for quality control and regulatory compliance? Independent testing and consulting laboratories groups such as the Tentamus Group, can fill that gap. One of its laboratories, bilacon, specializes in the safety of food, feed, food supplements, and cosmetics. 

In a recent interview with eFOOD-Lab International, Benjamin Ende, a state-certified food chemist with bilacon, talked about the benefits of LECO's TGA801 thermogravimetric analyzer in his lab's day-to-day operations.

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Thermogravimetrically Testing Biomass

March 19, 2021

200630_TGA801_450pxSo many factors go into the quality and characterization of plants and biomass, but many thermogravimetric analyses take so much time. Drying, ashing, and weighing multiple samples takes effort and care just to control for atmospheric effects, much less to actually get precise results that can then be used to analyze the quality and structure of the plants. LECO's TGA801 is an automated thermogravimetric analyzer designed to take the time out of the testing.

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