General Directions for Laboratory Work
1. Beginning of the Laboratory Work
2. Laboratory Equipment & Working Area
• Spacious Room, well lighted – fluorescent
lamps, ample supply of tap water, distilled
or deionized water, and for gas, suction, and
compressed air.
• Reagents centrally located, should be in
multiple supply, and properly organized and
labelled, well ventilated hoods are essential
• Laboratory should be provided with
adequate supply of lab equipment
• Separate room for instrumentation such as
analytical balances
3. Wash bottles – one of the most useful tools for
quantitative analysis and considerable care
should be taken to prepare a serviceable one.
4. Special type of wash bottles
5. Reagents – chemicals are the backbone of any
laboratory because they are used for
manufacturing and testing of the products.
ACS Grade
Alternate Name: American Chemical Society
Purity Level: Very high purity, meets or exceeds
Purity standards set by American
Chemical Society
Application: Food, drug or medicinal use. Suitable
for use in many laboratories and
analytical applications that require
stringent quality specification and
purity of ≥ 95%
Reagent Grade
Alternate Names: Analytical Reagent (AR)
Guaranteed Reagent (GR)
UNIVAR
AnalaR
Premium Reagent (PR)
Purity Level: Generally equal to ACS grade
(≥ 95%). Batch specific Certificate of
Analysis. Assay printed on label.
Application: Can be used in all scientific areas
where quality is critical. Quantitative
analysis in QA environments.
Research Laboratories.
Producing Primary Standards.
(Buffers, volumetric solutions)
USP Grade
Alternate Names: United States Pharmacopeia
Purity Level: Very high purity, meets or exceeds
purity standards set by United States
of Pharmacopeia (USP)
Application: Acceptable for food, drug or medicinal
use
NF Grade
Alternate Names: National Formulary
Purity Level: Meets or exceeds purity standards set
by National Formulary (NF)
Application: Acceptable for food, drug and
medicinal use. It is also used for most
laboratory purposes, but should always
be reviewed prior to beginning to
ensure the grade is appropriate for that
methodology.
Laboratory Grade
Alternate Name: Laboratory Reagent (LR)
UNILAB
Chemically Pure (CP)
Purity Level: Relatively high degree of purity, exact
levels of impurity unknown. Often
meets BP, USP or FG standards –
certification needs to be checked if
suitable for use on these applications.
Products specifications generally
available.
Application: Excellent for teaching and educational
labs. It is not pure enough for food,
drug or medicinal use.
Purified Grade
Alternate Name: Pure Grade
Practical Grade
Purity Level: Meets no official standard
Application: It is NOT pure enough to be offered
for food, drug or medicinal use of
any kind.
Technical Grade
Alternate Name: Tech Grade (TG)
Commercial Grade
Purity Level: Contains impurities. Basic products
specs usually available. Sometimes
complies with food grade
certification.
Application: Used in low grade application and/or
qualitative testing. Often supplied in
bulk for industrial or commercial
applications.
 General Directions for Laboratory Work

Primary Standards – AR (ACS)

- An analytical reagent of exceptional
purity that is specially manufactured for
standardizing volumetric solutions and
preparing reference standards.
- A chemical of such purity that can
weighed out and used to standardize a
solution to a very high degree of
accuracy is referred to as a “primary
A. Product Number
standard/”
B. Unit of Measure
- A primary standard has high purity
C. Product Name
greater than 99.95%
D. Name Suffix
- Analyst is likely to find “reagent grade”
E. Portfolio Brand
standards to be satisfactory.
F. GHS Pictograms
Other Grades G. Signal Word/H&P Phrases
H. Process Order Number
- These grades are application specific,
I. Batch Number
extensive data is available from key
J. Expiry Date
manufacturers and distributors
K. Physical-Chemical Properties
• HPLC grades (varrying degree of purity) L. CAS number or UFI
• Spectroscopy grades M. Storage Temperature
• Ultra-Pure Reagents N. 2D data matrix code
• AAS / ICP standards O. Country of Origin
• HR-GC Omni Solv Grade Solvents P. Disclaimer
• Molecular Biology Grade Q. EUH Phrase
• Environmental Grade R. Hazard inducing substance
• Environemntal Grade Plus S. Website URL
• Reference Standards for USP, EP, and BP T. Vibrant M
testing U. Company commercial name and address
• Food Pharmaceutical Grades (BP, EP,FG)
• Nano grade
• Residue grade solvents 6. Care in the Use of Reagents

Labelling of Chemicals When taking chemicals from a bottle, there

are three basic rules to obey:
All chemical labelling should be GHS
(Globally Harmonized System) compliant and
contains all the information needed to know about
what is inside the container. This should include the
following:
- Produce specification or Assay
- Clear product name
- Hazard and Precautionary Statements
- Pack Size 1. Use a clean spoon or spatula (do not use one
- Chemical Formula and Molecular which happens to lie around, unless it is
Weight cleaned.)
- UN Number and Shipping Name 2. Do not return chemical to the bottle
- Product Code and Barcode 3. Close the bottle tightly after use.
- Batch Number
- GHS Pictograms
 General Directions for Laboratory Work

For handling standard reagent solutions:

a) Do not return unused solution to the bottle to
avoid contamination
b) Close the bottles immediately and tightly
after use to prevent evaporation and
contamination
c) Even so, reagent solutions should generally
not be kept for longer than six months after
preparation (while some may only be used
for few days and some should be prepared
freshly each time they are used)
7. Notebooks
Notebooks should contain all recorded data
and all calculations. All records should be dated, all
observations and data be recorded at once in the
notebook, in neat and orderly manner.
8. Economy of Time
An economical use of laboratory hours is
best secured by acquiring a thorough knowledge of
the character of the work to be done before
undertaking it, and then by arranging the work that
no time will be wasted during time-consuming
operations.
9. Agreement of Results
All analysis should be made in duplicate,
and in general a reasonably close agreement of
results should be expected.