Anavac from ILMVAC is a new system for the generation of anaerobic, microaerophilic or capnophilic atmospheres suitable for the culturing of bacteria. Operating through vacuum evacuation of the original gas and replacement with oxygen-free gas, Anavac offers significant time, performance and cost advantages over alternative systems. It avoids the high cost of a traditional glove box, eliminates high consumable costs of sachet-based anaerobic jars, and reduces the handling costs associated with gas cylinders, supplies and waste products.
Quick and easy to use, Anavac is a microprocessor controlled vacuum evacuation and oxygen replacement system, complete with self-sealing jar. For the creation of anaerobic atmospheres, the system provides extremely rapid oxygen depletion, whilst for microaerophilic atmospheres the system provides full flexibility in the level of oxygen depletion. Supplied with one jar as standard, the system can be readily expanded with multiple jars, and is capable of generating multiple simultaneous atmospheres.
ILMVAC has designed the Anavac system to meet the needs of scientists involved in the critical culturing of anaerobic, microaerophilic and capnophilic bacteria in common anaerobic jars. Typical fields of use will include pharmaceutical research, water quality monitoring, the food and beverage industries and general areas of public health analysis.
In the creation of anaerobic atmospheres for culturing bacteria, the rapidity of oxygen depletion is critical. The presence of oyxgen can greatly reduce or eliminate the yield, which in turn can lead to potentially hazardous false negative results. Anavac generates anaerobic conditions inside a jar in less than a minute, more conveniently and at lower cost than using a glove box, and significantly faster than reactive sachet based systems which can take in excess of three hours to generate the same conditions. Anavac uses two evacuation cycles to 50mbar and back filling with nitrogen to generate an atmosphere with less than 0.05 percent oxygen.
Where oxygen-depleted but not oxygen-free atmospheres are required (bacteria growth in microaerophilic conditions), Anavac operates by varying the evacuation level and back fill conditions, making it simple to condition an atmosphere with any desired concentration in just a few minutes. By contrast, traditional methods are far less flexible or controllable, and can still take up to an hour to generate suitable microaerophilic conditions. And because Anavac is so controllable, and since the jars are self sealing and can be removed from the vacuum system for incubation as soon as the cycle is complete, it is possible to generate multiple different atmospheres in different jars sequentially, allowing more detailed investigations.
Where capnophilic and custom atmospheres are required for the growth of certain bacteria, Anavac can quickly and easily generate atmospheres with very specifc concentrations of CO2 and/or H2. Nitrogen is initially used as the backfill purge gas, enabling operators to obtain the lowest cost for rarefied atmosphere generation, and then the concentrations of CO2 and H2 can be set using the vacuum and filling controls on the Anavac system.
ILMVAC has designed the standard Anavac package to be extremely cost effective, offering the processing unit with one jar and connection. Further jars and a full range of ancillaries are available. Additionally, ILMVAC can supply adapter kits for customers' existing anaerobic jars, multi-jar connection kits, PC programming software (including pre-defined recipes for specific atmospheres), and data logging facilities for good laboratory practice.
