Monday, October 29, 2007

When choosing a water bath for your laboratory needs, several things have to be taken into consideration before a final choice is made. There are many types of baths available, so it pays to know what one intends to use it for. To start with, there are dry baths which don't even use water, where solid metal blocks make contact with the heater. These are usually used to quickly heat small samples, where the microcentrifuge tubes are put directly into these metal blocks. When using liquid baths, however, you also have the existance of hot oil baths. These are intended more for very high temperature applications where water will boil out. By using oil, one is able to heat significantly above the 100C bp of water. These are usually used in more industrial applications. In most research laboratories, one can find an abundance of static water baths, shaking water baths, and circulating water baths. Some of the latter are also called chillers because in addition to heating, they have a refrigeration system installed and can also cool the water. Static water baths are usually the least expensive the the least agressive forms of heat. They heat slowly by way of radiant heat and are usually used to warm agar or for other simple functions. Shaking and circulating baths are more aggressive and are used to heat enzymes or break-up solids in solutions. All of the aformentioned baths have very specific uses that we at microscopes.com will be happy to help you with. Drop us a line with a question.