Micromeritics ASAP 2460

Surface area and porosimetry system

  • High performance surface area and porosity analysis
  • Two, four, or six independently operated analysis ports
  • Fully automated operation

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A powerful combination: Micromeritics is a Malvern Panalytical company

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Overview

Analytical versatility with superior throughput

Surface area and porosity are important physical properties that influence the quality and utility of many materials and products. It is critical that these characteristics be accurately determined and controlled. 

Similarly, knowledge of surface area and especially porosity are important properties in understanding the formation, structure, and potential application of many natural materials.

Features

The Micromeritics ASAP 2460 surface area and porosimetry analyzer incorporates a unique expandable system designed for high performance and high sample throughput. The base ASAP 2460 is a two-port master control unit. For more throughput, additional two-port auxiliary units can be connected to the master unit, expanding the system to either a four-port or six-port analyzer.

  • Fully automated modular design: ideal for walk-up sample screening with scalable configurations
  • Flexible throughput options: choose from 2, 4, or 6 independent analysis stations to match your lab’s workload
  • Rapid BET surface area analysis: complete measurements in as little as 30 minutes
  • Customizable dosing control: select maximum volume increments or dosing across specific pressure ranges
  • Adjustable analysis temperature: enter or automatically calculate temperatures for accurate results
  • Equilibration timing flexibility: specify equilibration durations for different isotherm regions to optimize data quality
  • Low surface area & micropore capabilities: expand analysis range with specialized options
  • Advanced MicroActive software: features advanced NLDFT modeling for detailed pore structure analysis
  • Precision engineering: ensures consistent accuracy, repeatability, and reproducibility across all ports and control units

Applications

Surface area and porosity play major roles in the purification, processing, blending, tableting, and packaging of pharmaceutical products as well as their useful shelf life, dissolution rate, and bioavailability.

Surface area and porosity affect the curing and bonding of greenware and influence strength, texture, appearance, and density of finished goods. The surface area of glazes and glass frits affects shrinkage, crazing, and crawling.

Knowledge of surface area, total pore volume, and pore size distribution is important for quality control of industrial adsorbents and in the development of separation processes. Surface area and porosity characteristics affect the selectivity of an adsorbent.

Surface area and porosity must be optimized within narrow ranges to accomplish gasoline vapor recovery in automobiles, solvent recovery in painting operations, or pollution controls in waste-water management.

The wear lifetime, traction, and performance of tires are related to the surface area of carbon blacks used in their production.

The active surface area and pore structure of catalysts influence production rates. Limiting the pore size allows only molecules of desired sizes to enter and exit, creating a selective catalyst that will produce primarily the desired product.

The surface area of a pigment or filler influences the gloss, texture, color, color saturation, brightness, solids content, and film adhesion properties. The porosity of a print media coating is important in offset printing where it affects blistering, ink receptivity, and ink holdout.

The burn rate of propellants is a function of surface area. Too high a rate can be dangerous; too low a rate can cause malfunction and inaccuracy.

Controlling the porosity of artificial bone allows it to imitate real bone that the body will accept and allow tissue to be grown around it.

By selecting high surface area material with carefully designed pore networks, manufacturers of super-capacitors can minimize the use of costly raw materials while providing more exposed surface area for storage of charge.

Surface area is often used by cosmetic manufacturers as a predictor of particle size when agglomeration tendencies of the fine powders make analysis with a particle-sizing instrument difficult.

Surface area and porosity of heat shields and insulating materials affect weight and function.

Porosity is important in groundwater hydrology and petroleum exploration because it relates to the quantity of fluid that a structure can contain as well as how much effort will be required to extract it.

Nanotube surface area and microporosity are used to predict the capacity of a material to store hydrogen.

Fuel cell electrodes require high surface area with controlled porosity to produce optimum power density.

Specification

Electrical

Voltage 100/115/230 VAC (± 10%)
Frequency 50 or 60 Hz
Power 800 VA, exclusive of vacuum pumps, which are powered separately

Environment

Temperature
10 to 30 °C operating,
-10 to 55 °C storage or shipping
Humidity Up to 90% relative (non-condensing) for instrument

Capacity

Analysis 2, 4, or 6 sample ports (for krypton analysis, one sample port is used for dosing), each with a constantly monitored saturation pressure port

Analysis System

Manifold temperature transducer Type: Platinum resistance device (RTD)
Accuracy: ±0.10 °C by keyboard entry Stability: ±0.10 °C per month
Manifold pressure transducer
Range: 0 to 950 mmHg
Operating: 1000 mmHg maximum
0 to 10 mmHg added for Krypton option

Resolution:
1000-mmHg Transducer: 0.001 mmHg
10-mmHg Transducer1: 0.00001 mmHg
1-mmHg Transducer**: 0.000001 mmHg
Accuracy: 1000-mmHg Transducer: within 0.15% of reading
10-mmHg Transducer1: within 0.15% of reading
1-mmHg Transducer2: within 0.12% of reading
Sample and Po port transducers Range: 0 to 950 mmHg
Resolution: 0.01 mmHg
Accuracy: ±0.1% Full Scale
Vacuum control
Type: Thermocouple
Range: 0.001 to 1 mmHg

Physical

Dimensions (W, D, H) 38 x 59 x 94 cm
Weight
54 kg

Vacuum system

Nitrogen unit Nitrogen: Oil-sealed pump
Krypton Unit
Krypton & enhanced micropore option: High-vacuum pump

Accessories

Sample preparation systems

LN2 Transfer System

Specifically developed for conveniently filling Dewars for gas adsorption instruments, but also can be used for other cryogen applications.

FlowPrep

The Micromeritics FlowPrep lets you choose the most suitable gas, temperature, and flow rate for your application and sample material.

MicroPrep

The Micromeritics MicroPrep features a high-quality digital control unit to regulate the heating mantle to the desired set point temperature.

VacPrep

The Micromeritics VacPrep features six degassing stations, and a choice of vacuum or gas flow preparation on each of the six stations.

Smart VacPrep

The Micromeritics Smart VacPrep is an advanced six-port system that utilizes a vacuum to prepare samples by heating and evacuation.

Analysis System

  • Each analysis port operates independently and consecutively, enabling sample loading and unloading at any time, regardless of analysis progress; new analyses start immediately after the previous one finishes
  • The Dewar supports up to 60 hours of unattended operation, ideal for high-resolution adsorption/desorption isotherms without interruption
  • With a master unit plus two auxiliary units, the system performs six parallel BET surface area analyses in as little as 30 minutes
  • Servo-controlled pressure regulation ensures precise dosing and evacuation throughout the analysis
  • Supports simultaneous connection of up to five nonreactive adsorptives plus an additional gas for free space measurement
  • Intuitive MicroActive software offers customizable reporting and interactive isotherm evaluation, with user-selectable data ranges for BET, t-Plot, Langmuir, DFT, and advanced NLDFT modeling
  • An innovative dashboard provides real-time instrument performance monitoring and streamlined maintenance scheduling

Low surface area measurement (Krypton) and micropore options

In addition to the standard ASAP 2460, low surface area krypton and micropore models are available. 

Low surface area (krypton) model includes the addition of a 10 mmHg transducer and permits accurate measurement of very low surface area materials (< 1 m2/g). 

The micropore model includes the addition of a 1 mmHg transducer which extends the low pressure measurement capabilities and allows enhanced performance for characterizing microporous materials. The transducer also increases pressure resolution in the range necessary for micropore analysis.

Software: superior data presentation capability

Innovative MicroActive Software

Micromeritics’ innovative MicroActive software allows users to interactively evaluate isotherm data. 

Users can easily include or exclude data, fitting the desired range of experimentally acquired data points using interactive, movable calculation bars. 

Isotherms can be viewed on either a linear or logarithmic scale.

  • Interaction with adsorption data is direct. By simply moving the calculation bars, the user is immediately updated with new textual properties
  • Interactive data manipulation minimizes the use of dialog boxes and tunneling of dialogs to specify calculation parameters
  • Ability to overlay files (up to 25) including mercury intrusion data with a file add-and-subtract feature
  • User-selectable data ranges through the graphic interface allow direct modeling for BET, t-Plot, Langmuir, DFT interpretation, and much more
  • Report Options editor allows the user to define reports with on-screen previews. Information from each report can be included in a concise summary, as well as in a tabular and graphical information pane

Interactive reports

When appropriate to the analysis performed, Interactive Reports include:

  • Isotherm
  • BET Surface Area
  • Langmuir Surface Area
  • t-Plot
  • Alpha-S Method
  • BJH Adsorption and Desorption
  • Dollimore-Heal Adsorption and Desorption
  • Horvath-Kawazoe
  • MP-Method
  • DFT Pore Size and Surface Energy
  • Dubinin-Radushkevich
  • Dubinin-Astakhov
  • User-Defined Reports

User manuals

Please contact support for the latest user manuals.

Software downloads

Please contact support for the latest software version.

The perfect porosimetry pairing.

The perfect porosimetry pairing.

Combining porosimetry and surface area analysis, the ASAP 2560 is the ideal match for high capacity requirements.

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