[Histonet] Re: CBG BIOTECH RECYCLER

[Susan Raibley]

Michelle,
 
The xylene purity test is a very simple. Using a 100 ml graduated cylinder. You just add 85 ml of recycled xylene making sure the bottom of the meniscus aligns right at the top edge of the 85 ml mark and then 15 ml of distilled water, making sure the bottom of the meniscus aligns with the top edge of the 100 ml mark. Then using your hand as a stopper, invert the graduate and allow mixture to settle and then place back down and record the separation point at the bottom of the meniscus as the separation point...it should be near 15 ml. Then you subtract 15 from the separation point. The remainder plus 0.1 correction factor is the concentration of recoverd xylene. Ex: If your meniscus aligns at 15.5 ml, you take (15.5 - 15) + 0.1 = 0.6 impurities. Therefore, your concentration of recovered xylene is 99.4%. I can e-mail you this page from the operation manual so you can print it.
 
All of the information on testing/dillution/assaying formalin, xylene and alcohols should be in the operation manual provided with your recycler. There is a very simple to use alcohol dilution chart in there. You can get a free replacement if you need one by contacting CBG Biotech at 1-800-941-9484. The product # for our manual which has this info is MIS2001.
 
We haul away alcohol and some formalin, but usually not xylene, since we keep recycling it. At least it has been a very long time since we had to...only when we just get too backed up to recycle it. We work in research and sometimes our volumes of formalin are so great, we have to haul some away, but only as a last resort, so we mostly haul our alcohol away. 
 
I hope this helps! 
 
Susan Bincsik, HT (ASCP)


RE: [Histonet] Re: CBG BIOTECH RECYCLER
Wednesday, May 5, 2010 1:12 PM



From: 

histotech <@t> imagesbyhopper.com



To: 
histonet <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu


Susan,

A few questions/comments:

1)  how do you test for the xylene for purity?
2)  we used to make different batches of 95/100 and 70/80%, but we gave up
on that!  It was too much effort for us.  We do well with the 95/100 though.
We generally will get 98% - 99% on ours.
3)  re: alcohol contaminated with xylene, yes, we do the same thing.  On our
stainer, we will discard the alcohol after deparaffinization, but keep the
alcohol prior to the xylene at the end of the staining run.
4)  are you hauling off both alcohol and xylene waste?  I have found I have
very little waste xylene.

Thanks!

Michelle