Bleil Laboratories, Inc.

Services by Method

Electroanalytical Titrations

Our automated chlorine and sulfur furnace/titration system is ideal for analysis of fuels.  As we seek new areas of fuel production, it is important to keep in mind that fuel quality is critical to preventing pollution and acid rain.  To ensure that any newly developed fuels are consistent with current regulations on sulfur and chlorine emissions, we can provide inexpensive, high quality and low-detection limit analysis of your new fuels.  Contact us for pricing and other information.

Gas Chromatography

With a variety of detectors to meet all of your needs, Bleil Laboratories, Inc. runs many types of Gas Chromatography (GC) analyses.  GC simply separates individual components of a mixture in the gas phase.  Let's face it, most analyses are done on mixtures; we need to know, for example, what is contaminating soil, and soil is made of thousands and thousands of chemicals.  If we are looking for something that easily vaporizes, then gas chromatography will sort all of those components out and let us see if what we are looking for is, indeed, in the sample.  This technique is often used to look for pesticides in soil and water, PCB's in oil, air quality analysis, and far more, and capable of detection in the part per million range, or less.  Contact us for pricing and other information.

Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectroscopy

The premiere technique in mixture separation and organic analysis is GC/MS.  This instrument can identify unknown organics (ie drugs in forensic analysis, pesticides in water, and so forth), and quantify their amount, typically with detection limits of several parts per million.  The instrument is so powerful because it combines the separation technique of gas chromatography with a second, built-in analytical tool of mass spectroscopy.  In mass spectroscopy, each component of the mixture is smashed apart into pieces as it comes out of the gas chromatograph, and the pieces are further separated by mass.  Each organic compound has a unique mass spectrum, allowing for very accurate identification of unknown materials, and verification of analytes for legal battles.   Contact us for pricing and other information.

Head Space Extraction Gas Chromatography

Head space extraction is a special technique that is very useful for analyzing volatile organic contaminants in water, or body fluids like blood.  For example, it is commonly used for blood alcohol analysis, in which a sample of blood is kept in a sealed glass vial.  The alcohol in the blood will eventually vaporize out of the blood, and occupy the empty space in the vial above the blood.  This empty head space is then sampled and analyzed, and the concentration of alcohol in that head space is related to the original concentration of alcohol in the blood.  This is a very useful technique for any analysis of volatile organics, such as hydrocarbons in water.  If you have oil heating, and suspect that the oil might be leaching out into your water supply, for example, we can use head space extraction to determine if, indeed, you do have a problem.    Contact us for pricing and other information.

High Performance Liquid Chromatography

Much like gas chromatography, liquid chromatography is a technique for separating out the components of a mixture, only instead of the gas phase, this uses the liquid phase.  Some analytes are not easy to vaporize, such as herbicides.  So, instead of working at a high temperature, liquid chromatography keeps everything in the liquid state, but still separates it out for analysis.  Between gas chromatography and liquid chromatography, BLI can test for just about any type of organic contaminant, the most common type of toxin, you might need.    Contact us for pricing and other information.

NOTICE:  Due to failure to deliver by MidAmerica, Inc. in Chicago, our vendor, this service is not currently available.

Microwave Oven Extraction

This is a relatively new sample preparation technique.  Usually, you cannot analyze samples without first preparing them, and this preparation often required higher temperatures to cause the sample to release the analyte or to get it to react the way you want it to.  Microwave extraction techniques are highly accurate means to control this heating process, with greater uniformity than conventional heating, and less risk of accidentally burning the sample.  Usually, microwave extraction is not provided as a stand alone service, but rather as extraction for other analytical tests.  Contact us for pricing and other information.

Muffle Furnace Extraction

This is a very simple, brute-force technique for analyzing salts, metals and other inorganic analytes.  See, often, analytes are part of other compounds, and very frequently, these compounds are organic in nature.  A muffle furnace simply burns away the organic materials, leaving behind the inorganic compounds.  The residue is then analyzed for, for example, total iron content or total sodium content.  This is often a sample preparation technique for other analytical tests, and is usually not offered as a stand alone service.    Contact us for pricing and other information.

Purge and Trap Gas Chromatography

Much like head space analysis, purge and trap is used to analyze samples for volatile organic compounds.  However, instead of just analyzing the head space of the sample vial, the purge and trap forces the volatile organics out of the sample (purge) and concentrates them in a separate part of the apparatus (trap).  The trap is then forced to release the volatile organics onto a gas chromatograph for analysis.  Unlike head space analysis, purge and trap releases just about all of the organic analytes, and concentrates them, typically allowing for much lower detection limits.  This is extremely useful for something like arson cases, because most of the accelerant is burned away in the fire, but traces of it will always remain.  Although head space analysis will not be sufficient to find these traces, purge and trap will still work.  Typically, purge and trap is part of other analytical tests, and is not offered as individual services.  Contact us for pricing and other information.

Supercritical Fluid Extraction High Performance Liquid Chromatography

Sometimes it is difficult to extract the analyte out of a sample for analysis.  Before we can see if an analyte is out, we first have to prepare it so it can be injected into our instruments, and when standard extraction methods fail, there is Supercritical Fluid Extraction.  This is a very new extraction technique that uses very high pressure and very high temperature, and by carefully controlling these conditions, we can force a sample to "give up" an analyte that would otherwise be virtually impossible to extract.  This is a sample preparation technique and is usually not available as a stand alone service.    Contact us for pricing and other information.

Titrations

Perhaps the most accurate method of analysis possible, titrations are rarely used since they tend to be more expensive than instrumental methods, but if you need to know an answer, and to a very high degree of accuracy, titrations is still the standard method.  Most instrumental methods can predict concentration levels to, at best, a 5% error; titrations are often accurate to 0.05% or better.  If you are producing something that requires very accurate measurements, contact us about titrametric techniques.  

UV/Vis Spectroscopy

Spectroscopy is based on how much light is absorbed at some given color (frequency).  When you look at objects that have color, what causes this color is the fact that some of the pure white light is being absorbed by some chemical, and not allowed to reflect back to your eyes.  The more of that chemical there is, the more light that is absorbed.  This leads to spectroscopy, a powerful technique to look for chemicals that absorb light at a known frequency that can very accurately in inexpensively determine how much of that chemical is present.    Contact us for pricing and other information.

FTIR Analysis

FTIR spectroscopy works much like UV/Vis spectroscopy, except that it is in the infra red region of light, rather than visible or ultraviolet.  It is generally utilized to determine unknown identifications since each compound has a unique FTIR spectrum, and at Bleil Laboratories, Inc., we can also do surface analysis FTIR which is very popular in forensic science.  Contact us for further information.