The ashing of foods and feeds is an important sample preparation process but can often take many hours causing a bottleneck in the laboratory workflow. Laboratories often do not know how long their ashing process takes as samples are left in the oven overnight ready for analysis the next morning.

By using a microwave enhanced muffle system, ashing times can be reduced by up to 95% from hours to minutes using standard crucibles. For instance, the ashing of wheat flour in a traditional muffle furnace takes over 6 hours that can be reduced to 50 minutes in a microwave system.