If you are a chemist who is interested in optimizing the use of your time, then you could benefit from suggestions on how to speed up common techniques in the lab. This post is a giant turbo button for your laboratory evaporation performance. Read on to gain fresh ideas on how to make your evaporation process faster.

The other day I stumbled upon one of those life hack lists circulating the internet with tips on how to organize your closet better. I was surprised to find some of the ideas pretty simple, especially as the tips would ultimately help save time in my daily routine.

That’s good news for my personal life, but what about my lab life? I just wrote about time-saving tips in chromatography and lyophilization in the latest blog posts, but the list just wouldn’t be complete without another favourite of mine: laboratory rotary evaporation. So, I started to compile a list of chemistry lab hacks for making laboratory evaporation experiments more time-efficient.

It is possible to tweak your laboratory evaporation procedure so that the lab work is finished faster. Start by choosing your glassware wisely.

For example, use larger flasks to increase the speed of your evaporation performance.  Bigger flasks have a larger surface area which helps quicken the evaporation process. If you choose a beaker flask, consider that once your process is over, larger openings make it easier to collect your product and are much faster to clean up.

Monitor the height of the condensed solvent on the coils of the condenser and make sure to load no more than 75% of the condenser. You can achieve optimal condenser loading once the energy input for evaporation and the energy output through the condenser are in equilibrium. If your condenser is overloaded, consider increasing the pressure or lowering the cooling temperature. If the condenser is underloaded, consider decreasing the pressure or increasing the heating bath temperature.

A rotary evaporator with monitoring technology can substantially reduce your hands-on time in front of the instrument. A system equipped with a cutting-edge monitoring app enables you to perform other tasks while the process is ongoing. A good app should offer live views, display graphics of the process parameters and it should send push notifications when live action is required to the user’s PC or mobile device.

If these tips have sparked your curiosity, then you should

take advantage of a great poster with more suggestions on how to make your laboratory evaporation performance more efficient.

You will not be wasting your time if you keep dropping by the blog either. I’ve got more tips on how to evaporate common problems related to purification coming your way, so keep coming back for more.