Latest News and Application Notes

Farmers are fortune tellers. In so many ways, they must predict what will happen in the future. What seed do they plant? How many? Will there be a drought? What will their yields be? What will the market be like? Everything science can do to give farmers an edge in their predictions can help make their futures more secure. One such advantage arises from carbon and nitrogen determination in soil, fertilizer, and plant tissue.

With ever-increasing demands on your time and resources, optimizing your workflow is essential. Learn how state of the art instrument and software solutions come together, to enhance your one- and two-dimensional gas chromatography applications (GC-MS and GCxGC-MS) in a collection of short webinars presented on Wednesday, November 30. These webinars will be presented twice for ease of international audiences.

Carbon is an essential building block of life on our planet. The amount of carbon present is an important factor in soils and agriculture. Carbon levels can help determine the quality of soil or the location of natural hydrocarbon fossil fuel deposits that may affect the quality of raw building materials. These levels can be determined by a Total Organic Carbon (TOC) determination. LECO's line of instruments includes several that can determine TOC in different ways.

Sulfur is an essential nutrient in crop production. It is vital for the production of chlorophyll and several amino acids that form protein, among other functions in plants. In recent years, the world has been paying more attention to sulfur emissions, trying to minimize SO₂ in the air, which in turn minimizes the sulfur deposited naturally in the fields. When combined with the trend toward high-yield crop production in many areas of the world, knowing the actual level of sulfur in your fields has become even more important. Sulfur can also be measured in plant tissues, and then, of course, knowing the sulfur content of fertilizer is also necessary to correct any sulfur deficiencies or excess in your fields. All of these sulfur determinations can be handled with a single combustion instrument from LECO.

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.

LECO recently concluded a webinar series on agricultural applications of our instruments with a presentation by Dr Frank Dorman of Dartmouth College, Department of Chemistry, formerly of Penn State University, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. While at Penn State, Frank worked on an environmental forensic investigation of wastewater applied to agricultural fields.

Even the best-trained experts can only move as fast as their equipment will allow, and as helium prices increase and supplies drop, the fast spectral acquisition speeds of GC-TOFMS instruments stand ready to reap the benefits of fast GC separations afforded by utilizing hydrogen carrier gas.

While the advantages of helium as a carrier gas for mass spectrometers have long been known, it is a limited natural resource. On the other hand, hydrogen gas generators can be installed in any lab for a constant supply and, conveniently, increased chromatographic speeds.

Wood is a strong, durable, and renewable resource that is popular in construction, especially for furniture, but it grows more expensive year by year. Engineered wood products such as medium-density fibreboard (MDF) or particle board are much more economical solutions that are common in many homes around the world. However, there is a certain danger in their manufacture that is important to monitor.

Portland cement, one of the most ubiquitous building materials in the world, is not all the same. There are five standardized types of Portland cement classified by the ASTM C150 standard, and each of these different types have different best-use cases. Part of what distinguishes these types of cement is the concentrations of carbon and sulfur in the precursor materials. Sulfur is especially important in determining the final chemical resistances of the Portland cement, so knowing the sulfur concentration is critical to correctly determining the type and quality of the final material.

There is no question about it: concrete is the most ubiquitous and versatile building material in the world. While the basic recipe is simple—cement, aggregate, water, and air—the variations and additions to this recipe can create infinite types of concrete. Knowing that your concrete is capable of withstanding the forces that will be acting upon it is vital to the success of any concrete construction process.