Michael Ebitson
Michael has been practicing analytical chemistry for over 20 years which, combined with his 11 years at the company and his many years of service and customer support, provides him with a significant amount of experience in application areas such as environmental, food and beverage, pharmaceutical and industrial. Michael enjoys working closely with customers and coworkers using his knowledge and experience to assist them with their laboratory challenges and workflow hurdles.
Recent Posts
What is SGT-HEM and how do you test for it?
April 6, 2023 at 2:00 PM / by Michael Ebitson posted in Water and Environmental Testing
Alumina sample cleanups and how can you implement in your workflow?
March 2, 2023 at 2:00 PM / by Michael Ebitson
If you are working in an environmental lab and encounter tissue samples and highly contaminated petroleum soil samples that create a lot of noise and interference on your analytical instruments, then you may need to apply an alumina cleanup to your workflow.
Why and when is florisil cleanup necessary with sample extracts?
February 2, 2023 at 1:32 PM / by Michael Ebitson posted in Water and Environmental Testing
No matter what your sample will be tested for, if you are extracting with liquid-liquid extraction (LLE), solid phase extraction (SPE), accelerated solvent extraction (ASE) or microwave, your sample's extracts will appear to look clean or dirty.
How to Optimize Your Sample Filtering for Hemp, Cannabis and Edible Products
September 1, 2022 at 2:00 PM / by Michael Ebitson
If you have ever worked with samples in the food industry you must have run into the challenges of working with various matrices. Each of them ranging from gummies, flour and oils can keep providing challenges even when you have prepped the sample and it is about to go on the analytical instrument.
What do you need to know about concentrating PFAS Analytes?
April 7, 2022 at 2:00 PM / by Michael Ebitson
If you are a chemist that is either a beginner or an expert in extracting per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) there are always going to be questions that come up after the extraction has taken place. Most often, questions occur at the concentration step. Such topics include water bath temperature, extract dryness, evaporation rates, and even water in the extract. How can one or all of the topics impact your analysis and where are good starting points?
I can remember asking myself this question many years ago at my first environmental laboratory job. I was manually shaking out separatory funnels for EPA 625 and 608 and each sample looked drastically different from the next as I was pouring them into each separatory funnel. At the time, I thought the term wastewater meant anything that came from a sewer pipe and that it mainly consisted of human waste. When I looked deeper into the possible sample categories for these methods, I was very surprised by the different sample types required to be tested as wastewater. With that, it prompted me to ask myself well where does it come from?
What to know when transitioning from EPA method 525.2 to 525.3
May 20, 2021 at 9:00 AM / by Michael Ebitson
When learning that you may be transitioning to a newer revision of an EPA method some thoughts may come to mind such as: it took so long to perfect this sample preparation method, or I hope they have some improvements and or greater flexibility allowances in this revision. Well, that is exactly what we will touch upon in this blog post - sample preparation improvements.
Why Concentrate Down to 1 mL End Point? Can you go down to 0.5 mL?
April 29, 2021 at 3:00 PM / by Michael Ebitson
When working with regulated environmental methods have you ever asked yourself why are all these extracts concentrated down to one milliliter (mL) final volume? This is true for most soil and aqueous methods. Of course, a few methods will require a more diluted final volume but not many.
What is the difference between an Internal Standard and Surrogate?
April 1, 2021 at 1:00 PM / by Michael Ebitson
Have you ever worked with new methods and said to yourself “yes I know what these internal standards and surrogates are measuring and when to add them to the samples”? Sounds familiar right? Well, I remember when I first started working in the laboratory and needed to fully understand and follow all method protocols and standard operating procedures (SOPs). One of the questions I asked was, what is the difference between method 525.2 and its internal standard and surrogates versus every other method we extract and analyze?
Myth Busters: Smaller Sample Volumes - EPA Method 1664B
December 16, 2020 at 9:22 AM / by Michael Ebitson