The whole acid purification thing, someone finally made it 'fully automatic'

2026-07-22 14:29:56

The following situations are ones that most labs doing trace analysis have probably experienced:

Got to the lab in the morning, turned on the ICP-MS/MS to make a standard curve, but the RSD was way over limit. Spent the whole morning troubleshooting—sample introduction system was fine, torch was fine, tuning parameters were fine. Finally found out it was the batch of acid we changed yesterday; the purity had some fluctuations.

Or, say we got abnormal trace metal data from photovoltaic silicon wafer samples sent for testing, and the client is asking for the reason. You have to trace it back and check: same batch of samples, same instrument, same method, the only variable is that when the acid was changed, the operator’s gloves touched different tools.

Acid is the baseline for trace analysis

Whether it's third-party semiconductor testing, quality control of wet electronic chemicals, or trace analysis of photovoltaic materials, instruments like ICP-MS/MS now require acids to be pure to the ppt level (parts per trillion). At this level of precision, any tiny impurity fluctuation in the acid reagents will be faithfully recorded by the instruments, potentially showing up as abnormal data, customer complaints, or even batch rejections.

Human involvement is the biggest variable in the purification process

Traditional acid purification equipment requires operators to put on protective clothing, open the fume hood, and manually pour the raw acid into the acid chamber of the distillation setup. Then they sit nearby, occasionally checking the liquid level to prevent dry burning. After a few hours, the purification is finished, and they manually transfer the collection bottle. When changing the acid, the equipment has to be disassembled, and every contact part cleaned by hand.

manual

When you open the container to add acid, particles from the air and contaminants carried by people can get into the system. When switching between different acids, if the cleaning isn’t thorough, the risk of cross-contamination can build up.

Time

A piece of equipment needs to be fed and cleaned multiple times a day, and operators are stuck next to it. At night and on weekends, the equipment can only run idle or be shut down.

Consistency

Different operators, different times, different cleaning intensities—these uncontrollable factors add up, causing the acid produced by the same equipment in different batches to have inconsistent purity.

For semiconductor labs that have to issue dozens of test reports every day, for every batch of wet electronic chemicals going through quality checks, and for institutions that track the metal content of each photovoltaic silicon wafer, the words 'purity fluctuation' represent huge risk exposure.

Acid purification can be fully automated

It's a fully automatic continuous sub-boiling acid purification system launched by SGao (Beijing) Intelligent Technology, targeting exactly each of the pain points mentioned above.

Fully automatic two-stage tandem distillation

Common single-stage distillation equipment on the market can only remove most of the impurities in one purification. If higher purity acids are required, it needs to be distilled two to three times, each time carrying a risk of contamination. This system uses a double-stage evaporative reflux design, achieving the same effect as distilling a single-stage device two to three times in just one run. It produces ultra-high purity acids at Ppt-level, and the two stages are physically separated to effectively prevent cross-contamination.

Automatic acid replenishment

The system has a built-in liquid level sensing module that monitors the raw acid storage in real-time. When the level drops below the set threshold, it automatically adds acid through air pressure-driven, fully PFA-sealed flow paths. No need to manually open the lid or interrupt operation. The equipment can run 24/7, so nights and weekends are no longer downtime, and the daily purified acid output can reach nearly 2 liters.

Automatic Cleaning

When switching acids or doing regular maintenance, you can start the automatic cleaning process with one click. The whole cleaning process happens inside the system, so you don’t need to take apart or touch any parts. This minimizes the risk of contamination from manual handling and also frees up the operator’s time.

Device background ≤10 ppt

All pumps, pipelines, valves, and other parts that come into contact with acid are made of ultra-pure PFA/PTFE. The equipment has low background, long corrosion-resistant life, and controllable maintenance costs.

The combination of these four functions points to one outcome: from feeding, double-stage purification, and product collection to automatic cleaning, the whole process requires no manual intervention.

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