How Fluid System Expertise Improved Laboratory Functionality
Learn how Swagelok helped the University of Ottawa enhance fluid system performance at its Advanced Research Complex, home to Canada’s only accelerator mass spectrometer. The facility supports advanced isotope analysis for environmental, archaeological, industrial, and research applications, requiring clean, reliable systems capable of maintaining sample integrity at extremely low detection levels. Swagelok’s fluid system expertise supported the lab’s transition from glass to stainless steel systems, helping improve automation, cleanliness, and long-term functionality. Through materials guidance, high-purity components, and orbital welding training, Swagelok helped the university strengthen fabrication precision, productivity, and confidence in its critical research infrastructure.
Video Transcript
The ARC, which is the Advanced Research Complex, is a collaboration between photonics and geoscience. Mass spectrometry is the technology used to analyze very trace isotopes. How do we possibly measure something that is one in a million billions? We need very high energies.
A normal mass spectrometer has a fairly high noise level. But by adding the energy to the ion that the accelerator has, you actually get above the noise level. It is like being at a bar with the football game on TV—you have trouble talking to the person next to you. But when the fire alarm goes off, everyone can hear it. Why? It is coming in with a much higher-energy signal. That is basically what the accelerator does for the particles that we are working with.
When samples come in, they can be coming in from a research vessel in the ocean, from volcanoes, or from an archaeological site. Once they get here, they get sorted according to which isotopes or elements are of interest, so we know which technique is necessary.
We basically clean them up and reduce them from the raw materials, which could be ivory, wood, or shell. We convert them to CO2 so they are a gas, and then we take that gas and convert it back into a solid. We want to adjust the carbon—we call it graphite—and then we bring the graphite down to the accelerator.
Some of the most exciting dating that we have been using radiocarbon for involves artifacts that have been frozen in time for thousands of years. Aboriginal communities used to hunt caribou. Caribou would go up there to get on these ice patches at high elevations to get away from the flies in the summer, and it was a happy hunting ground up there. Well, lots of materials were left behind. Broken arrows have tip points. I think we are the first lab in the world to analyze the glue. We could date the point, at least when it was used, by the resin that we got off it.
The collaboration was extremely intense regarding the materials they were trying to use. They were taking a different approach, moving from using a lot of glass in their system to using stainless steel. They were also using very typical manual systems, and they wanted to become much more automated. That led to a lot of selection around valves and stainless steel materials, the types of connections, and even welding to achieve that high integrity.
People were worried that, because we were using steel instead of glass, there would be a lot of memory problems. In other words, one sample would leave residue behind and affect the next sample coming into that same port. So we had to run some extensive tests to show that there were no residual issues and that the sample did transfer completely, providing that there were no reactive sites within the materials being used. That was one of the main reasons we went with orbital welding.
In this, our relationship with Swagelok went to a new level. We needed precise welds, clean welds, and many of them. It warranted us actually buying the welder. And I was so pleased when Swagelok hosted our machine guys down at the factory for a training course. Our guys are pretty good welders and thought, “Ah, I have a week’s holiday down here. We are going to go down, learn a little bit about their new instrument, turn it on, but we are good welders. We have this nailed.” They had never worked so hard in a training course in their lives, according to the report that I got.
We took the course at Swagelok, and it really opened our eyes. We reviewed the whole process in depth. I believe this benefited us immensely in achieving the levels of welding and cleanliness required here.
The initial purchase of the tool was based on the construction of the AMS lab. But they are finding all sorts of different applications where high-purity tubing, fittings, and valves can be utilized at a much lower cost than manually putting these products together.
We trust Swagelok because of the experience we have had using them.
I think everyone is convinced that the way to go is with products that have proven themselves.
Our intent is that we are going to take what we are doing to a whole new level. I just see it getting bigger and better. The sky is the limit.
