What Chemical Lab Equipment is Most Popular Among Engineers?

Around here, that is equipment for off the clock maneuvers. That and a cigar.

Woz gunna say 'still'

'Still'

Still? Still standing around? Still making whiskey? Still doing time in a honky-tonk prison?

The laboratory benches need to be clean, new (who has that except me?), self-closing drawers are the rage. A good fume hood (cabinet) is a must if metals digestions, or other highly acidic heated samples are processed. Use a carbon pack cheapo hood if no permanent one installed.

The analysis equipment could be a whole gamut of things. I would think that labs that deal with alloy identification and testing should at least have a good hand-held PMI gun. Bruker makes a decent one.

New techniques with Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) allow identification of various carbon steels used in boiler tubing, where the PMI gun fails to distinguish.

Some laboratories will need infrared spectroscopy, q-nmr, Mass spectrometry, or one of the various hyphenated techniques such as GC-MS, or LC-MS. ICP, AAS, and others are good for quantitative elemental analysis on a routine basis.

Bottom line: the laboratory needs to be tailored for the unique situation the analyst/engineer finds themselves engaged in. Don't forget physical testing, such as thermography, viscometers, refractometers, optical instruments such as PLM, and others.

For crying out loud, also purchase the correct analytical scales or balances, depending on the precision and range of mass being tested.