[China Instrument Network Instrument Development] In daily life, more and more people are concerned about the harm of heavy metals over the human body. However, there are many technical difficulties in the field of detection of heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, mercury, arsenic, etc. that are difficult to detect, cost high, time is too long, and the results are not reliable.
Professor Gong's team developed a miniature heavy metal detector. Reporter Guo Xu photo
There is a company in the south bank of Chongqing Municipality that has introduced and digested scientific and technological innovation achievements and developed a miniature analytical instrument that can rapidly and effectively determine the content of heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, mercury, arsenic and other heavy metals.
Is lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic exceeding the standard? Feed additive companies encounter world problems
Chongqing Mintai Spice Chemicals Co., Ltd. is a well-known enterprise in Nanan District that mainly produces feed additives. A few years ago, the company's feed additive products were exported to Europe and Southeast Asia. When entering the customs, the detection of heavy metals was difficult.
The composition of feed additives is complicated, and the lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic content is too low. It has not been possible to provide these heavy metal detection reports for many years, which has greatly limited its development in the international market. Yang Mei, chairman of the company, said that this is actually a world problem. Experts in this field at home and abroad have always wanted to overcome it.
Yang Mei, who graduated from the chemical analysis profession, had his own idea of ​​developing test equipment and carrying out inspection work. She thought of her own university teacher, Dong Zhihua University professor Gong Zhixiang.
Investing in R&D capital tens of millions of university retired professors lead the research
Gong Zhixiang has been teaching and researching in life analysis at East China Institute of Technology. After retirement, 68-year-old Gong Zhixiang was hired by Perkinelmer, the world's most famous instrument company, as a senior technical specialist and worked in applied research for 9 years. At that time, many of Gong Zhixiang’s research achievements had led the world.
Since 2015, Gong Zhixiang has served as the head of the project's R&D team at Yangmei Company. He mainly focuses on the “memory effect†of measuring mercury in mainstream heavy metal detection equipment, and cannot tackle actual problems such as lead and cadmium in the actual samples.
Over the past few years, Yangmei has invested tens of millions of yuan and established R&D institutions in Shanghai, Chengdu and Chongqing. After years of painstaking research, Gong Zhixiang, 80, led the team to successfully develop a "micro atomic fluorometer" capable of measuring heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, mercury, arsenic and other heavy metals.
Multiple performances to fill market gaps New product plans to be available next year
In the laboratory of Chongqing Mintai Spice Chemicals Co., Ltd., the reporter saw this instrument: the appearance is similar to a cube with a side length of about 40 centimeters, measuring, displaying, printing, and storing as a whole, weighing only about 20 kilograms. " The "weight" and "volume" are less than half of the current mainstream detectors, and can be carried to the field for testing.
Its advantages are also reflected in its sensitivity and detection speed. Gong Zhixiang introduced that, for example, the detection of rice, the current mainstream of heavy metal detection equipment can hardly detect the content of cadmium in rice, even if the imported graphite furnace atomic absorption instrument also takes several hours. However, using this "micro atomic fluorometer" requires only 2-3 minutes to obtain accurate test results.
In the detection of mercury elements, the existing mainstream testing equipment generally has a severe “memory effectâ€, that is, when one instrument performs mercury element detection, it will be affected by the previous detection when detecting other elements, resulting in the failure of detection. If the data arrives or the data is not accurate, parts must be replaced to increase the cost in use. The newly developed instrument perfectly solves this dilemma that has plagued the industry for decades.
Yang Mei introduced that the newly developed equipment has filled many gaps in the market and can be widely used in dozens of fields such as food, medical care, environmental protection, and agriculture. Currently, they are conducting a series of preparatory work such as the testing of various samples, the identification of results, patent applications, and production licenses, and are striving for success in the market next year.
(Original Title: South Bank Enterprises Invented the Miniature Heavy Metal Detection "Artifact")