[tkliew]

hi guys...

I need your help...I came through an ASTM testing for testing water content of crude oil. There is one term called SOLVENT BLANK which i have no idea what does it means...

Can anyone explain to me what does solvent blank means??..  Thank you very much.. 

[Borek]

Do the test just for solent, without adding your sample. If you get 0 - that's OK, if you don't get 0 - you know all your tests will be too high by that value.

[Golden_4_Life]

A "solvent blank" is one type of quality control sample that is included in an analytical run.  The "s.b." gives the analyst two important bits of information: 1) were the chemicals I used to extract, dissolve, or dilute the test sample with actually clean of sample analytes, and 2) was the instrument that I used to analyze the samples with also clean of the sample target analytes?  A simple experiment is to just go through the entire extraction procedure without adding test sample to it---just use the chemical reagents in the normal amounts.  Then, inject (or assay) the sample and see if you get a signal above baseline. If "No", then your analytical  procedure meets quality control and you can trust the true results of your analyzed sample. If "yes", then it means that your chemical reagents or instrument has some ''contamination" that needs to be rectified prior to generating trustworthy data.

[tkliew]

thanks Borek and Golden...now i can proceed with my experiment without any confusion...

thanks alot!!