Naturally occurring materials and products such as plants, soils, foods, plastics or even waste material are inhomogeneous. In order to achieve a representative analysis of these materials large sample sizes, even several grams, may be required. Yet other products require the determination of very small concentrations, such as nitrogen in corn starch, or low sulphur soils, would also benefit from the ability to analyze large sample weighs. The analyzers of the vario MAX series permit the determination of Carbon/Nitrogen, Carbon/Nitrogen/Sulfur or Carbon/Hydrogen/Nitrogen from samples ranging from milligrams to multi-grams. Samples are easily weighed into 5 ml re-usable crucibles. Liquids, solids or semi-solids are automatically loaded from a 60 position sampler for fully automatic and unsupervised analysis.

A very cost effective alternative can be offered with the instruments of the vario MACRO line. They also allow the direct analysis of macro samples up to 1.5 g or 200 mg organic material in the element combinations CN, CNS or CHN. The difference to the vario MAX instruments is the sample handling which is rather classical, i.e. by wrapping the samples in tin foil or tin capsules. Analysis and detection strength are equally excellent for both instrument families.