LabHouse services 4 main industries. These are the Industrial-Chemical; Research; Environmental and Pharmaceutical.
Pharmaceutical
LabHouse leads the market with pharmaceutical TOC applications. Used for purified waters according to USP and EP requirements and the latest requirement that of cleaning validations. The Tekmar Fusion UV-Persulphate lab-based TOC system meets both demanding applications. LabHouse have over 10TOC systems installed at various pharmaceutical companies. On the dissolution side, LabHouse supplies a high quality range of dissolution accessories from QLA for all makes of baths. Vessels, baskets, paddles and filters are all available and fully compliant to pharmacopoeia specifications. Barnstead Ultra-pure water systems are ideally suited for the pharmaceutical market. Producing excellent quality water at higher volumes than most; reduced running costs and the feature of a NIST calibration module for validation are unique features. HPLC columns in the pharmaceutical market requires batch to batch reproducibility, longer lasting and reduced costs. Often difficult to change brands due to fear of re-validation, the 3 brands LabHouse supply, namely Cosmosil, Chromegabond and Inertsil allows for slightly different reversed phase chemistries to duplicate separations as best as possible. Pharmacopoiea do not specify specific manufactures, only type of column chemistry, so “alternative” columns are thus allowed. LabHouse is one of the few companies to run a “try one, if you like it, buy it” policy. Columns not suitable are simply returned and one of the other 2 brands can be attempted. Environmental LabHouse leads with the Tekmar TOC systems here. The majority of the drinking water companies in Southern Africa use our TOC systems, and all produced drinking water in the Gauteng and related regions is tested using our TOC systems (Rand Water, Rietvlei, Sedibeng, Midvaal). Also of significance is the use of the Tekmar Purge and Trap systems for the analysis of Geosmin and 2-MIB in drinking water. These harmless algal by-products are present in raw waters in warmer seasons and impart a mould smell in drinking waters at 5 to 30 parts per trillion levels! Only Purge and Trap is able to determine this accurately and reproducibly at these low levels. The analysis allows for correct dosing of expensive activated carbon to remove this from waters and thus reduce customer’s complaints. The Tekmar Headspace system is also used for the analysis of trihalomethanes in drinking waters. Evidence suggests that these can be carcinogenic and occur when the chlorination of the water for disinfection reacts with the organic carbon to produce these compounds. Besides drinking water, TOC monitoring of waste water allows an indication of organic loading to assist treatment for the final release into our water streams. Latest addition of products to the environmental market include discrete analysers from Systea and a revolutionary new rapid wastewater toxicity testing product from SciTOX. For an application update on this product, Click here.
Research LabHouse supplies Headspace systems to the Department of Health’s forensic laboratories for blood alcohol analysis. The latest Tekmar Headspace, the HT3, also allows Dynamic Headspace which improves sensitivity a hundred fold over conventional Static Headspace. Click here for an application of the HT3 and forensic applications. Most research institutions doing HPLC work require ultra-pure water systems. Often running gradients, they would require systems producing the lowest TOC by utilizing a built-in UV lamp. Having the lowest organics in HPLC grade water results in fewer gradient ghost peaks. Click here for an application on gradients and HPLC grade water. Running HPLC for bioseparations also require longer 25cm reversed phase columns with high resolution power. Here the Cosmosil, Chromegabond and the Inertsil range are an awesome range for any demanding application. The general laboratory product range of Barnstead and Fisher allows specific products well suited to research institutions. Industrial-ChemicalThis includes the petrochemical and food and beverage markets as well. Besides the requirement for general laboratory products, these markets are also interested in Volatile Organic Carbon (VOC) analysis. Tekmar’s Purge and Trap and Headspace units are used by some of our clients in this market, like Sasol. The majority of Food and Beverage clients produce high organic loading in their effluents. They are subject to tariffs if these levels are too high. Continuous monitoring of this is thus important. The use of the PPM on-line TOC system continuously monitors the carbon loading and can be equated to actual COD values. High loading now is apparent when it happens and not 24 hours later as with COD tests of old, and corrective action can be taken timeously. Click here for more information | 
