Microwave digestion equipment work invariably with extremely harsh physical and chemical conditions and they tend to exit service much earlier than the downstream measurement instruments in general. That being said, do we really know how long their lifespan can reach? 

To understand the bounds and limits of our best setting products, a survey on Preekem microwave systems with more than 10 years active service was launched in 2020. Up till Sep 10, 2021, 127 eligible respondents emerged.

The 126th identified instrument, a WX-8000 installed in 2008, runs tirelessly in CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. (CSPC is a national-level innovation-focused enterprise integrating R&D, production and sales of new patented drugs.) and mostly for high-throughput applications. 

The latest honorary discovery, an early model called EXCEL which is widely seen as the predecessor of the classic TOPEX series, was installed in 2009 at Bright Dairy  (Bright Dairy enterprise was founded in 1911，a member of the China's elite dairy producers, with a sales of 4 billion dollars in 2020 ). This equipment alone runs over 10-thousand samples annually.