Free tools for the standards lab — and the reference library the industry is missing

Design gravimetric standards with real uncertainty, plan serial dilutions, track your COAs and expiry, and print professional certificates that show their own working — free, with a free account. In return, we're building the first measured reference library for LUMA VUV data, from standards labs already have on the shelf.

Create a free account →
Free, always. Your account unlocks the tools and lets you submit a reference standard.
Gravimetric & volumetric blendsDesign a multi-component standard by mass or to a flask volume; enter what the balance actually read and get true concentrations with uncertainty — never assumed from the target.
Serial dilution plannerWork down from a certified stock; it warns when a step needs less material than a balance can weigh reliably.
Certificate of PreparationA professional, signed certificate that shows its own calculations — print it or save it to your folder.
COA library & expiryScan a certificate with your phone; track what you hold by room, cabinet and shelf, and get warned before it expires.
Solvent compatibilityFlags co-elution and boiling-point clashes, and suggests a solvent that clears every analyte in your blend.
Compound referencePhysical properties, storage guidance with the reasoning shown, and prep notes for any compound.
Reference & education — no account neededConcentration math, standard preparation, uncertainty, chromatography and spectroscopy — each with the formula and a worked example. Open it without signing in.

What we're doing, and why it needs doing

Vacuum-ultraviolet detection identifies compounds by their absorbance across twelve wavelength bands. It's a genuinely capable technique. What doesn't exist yet is a reference library for LUMA data — so today each lab builds its own from scratch, one compound at a time, and none of that effort is shared.

We're building that library from measured spectra rather than predicted ones, working toward making relative response factors usable — so a lab could quantify compounds it doesn't hold a calibration standard for. Which is most of them.

New analytical technology rarely fails on the science. It stalls because someone has to do the unglamorous part first — develop the methods, run the standards, gather the reference data — and that work is slow and expensive, and nobody is funded to do it. We're taking that role on. But the reference material has to come from the labs that already have it sitting on a shelf.

What we're asking for

We'd loveWhy
Expired or out-of-date standardsIdentity doesn't expire — only certified concentration does. Expired material is perfectly good for a reference spectrum, and you'd otherwise pay to dispose of it.
Surplus or discontinued lotsSame reason. Anything sitting unused.
Near-empty bottlesWe need very little — a couple of millilitres is plenty.
Sulfur species and heavier aromatics especiallyThese are the hardest to obtain and the least well covered.

We'll take anything identifiable. If you're unsure whether something is useful, it probably is — tell us and we'll say.

Standards we're seeking

Anything identifiable helps — but these are the priorities, and when you submit you can tap a compound from this list to add it in one click, with its CAS already filled in.

Most needed — sulfur speciation

The C3–C4 mercaptan isomers are the top priority: they're near-identical to the detector, so they can only be captured with a real, measured standard.

Mercaptans (methyl, ethyl, n-/iso-propyl, n-/sec-/iso-/tert-butyl) · sulfides & disulfides (dimethyl, diethyl, dimethyl disulfide) · thiophenes (thiophene, methylthiophenes, benzothiophene, dibenzothiophene) · carbon disulfide · carbonyl sulfide

Hydrocarbons & oxygenates

Aromatics (BTEX, trimethylbenzenes, naphthalenes, biphenyl) · oxygenates (MTBE, ETBE, TAME, alcohols, ketones, ethers) · olefins, naphthenes, and the n-alkane ladder (C5–C12) plus isooctane

Also welcome

Nitrogen compounds (pyridine, quinoline, aniline) · heavier aromatics / PAH (fluorene, phenanthrene, pyrene) · certified refinery-gas, natural-gas and sulfur-in-gas mixtures

Is this legitimate? Fair question.

You're being asked to hand chemicals and contact details to a website. You should be skeptical. Here's everything you'd need to check us out, and the things we deliberately don't do.

We will never ask you for: a payment or card number · a bank or purchase-order detail · your employee ID · remote access to your systems · your instrument data.

You create a free account — an email and password on this domain only — so your workgroup can share the tools and certificates. We store only your account: your name, company, site and workgroup membership, with the password hashed so we can't read it. Your inventory, COAs and certificates are never on our servers — they stay in a folder you choose on your own machine. We will never email you asking for your password, and we'll never ask for it anywhere but a page you navigated to yourself.

How to verify us independently

Check the address bar. This site is library.mai-alchemy.com — a subdomain of mai-alchemy.com, our main site. Both are served over HTTPS with a valid certificate. Look for the padlock.
Email us at an address you type yourself. info@mai-alchemy.com — don't trust a link, type the domain in and check it matches.
We're a real company with a real person behind it. Medrado Analytical Innovations, LLC, Texas. Run by Michael Leal — 33 years in petroleum analytical chemistry (Chevron, ExxonMobil, Caleb Brett, Inspectorate). Ask around; the Gulf Coast lab community is small.
Ask for a call before sending anything. We'd rather talk first anyway. Most submissions are collected in person.

What this site does and doesn't do technically

No third-party scripts, no trackers, no analytics, no advertising pixels. The page loads nothing from anywhere except this domain. You can confirm that in your browser's network tab.
One cookie, and only one. A session cookie keeps you signed in after you log in — that is the only thing it is ever used for. No trackers, no analytics.
Your inventory and certificates never leave your device. They are held in your own browser and in a folder you choose.
Reading a COA happens on your device. You scan the certificate with your phone's built-in text scanner (or paste text you copied), and the details are parsed in your browser — the certificate is never uploaded to us. You keep the photo and the parsed record in your own records folder. The only image that reaches our server is a photo you choose to attach to a submission, so we can see the standard you're sending — it stays with that submission record and nothing else.
What we hold on our server: your account (name, company, site, email, a hashed password, workgroup membership) and the reference-standard details you submit — the label of the standard and your contact, so we can arrange collection. Not your inventory, your COAs or your certificates. Nothing else.
We don't sell, share or publish any of it. It's used to build the library and to contact you about your submission.

What you get back

Blend designer

Design a multi-component calibration standard in % w/w, mg/kg, % w/v, mg/L or % v/v. It returns a purity-corrected weigh sheet; you enter what the balance actually read and it back-calculates true concentrations with uncertainty — never assuming you hit the target. Every step is shown with your own numbers, so you can check the arithmetic rather than trust it.

Serial dilution planner

Work down from a certified stock through as many levels as you need. It shows the weights at each step and warns when a step needs less material than a balance can weigh reliably — the error that quietly ruins low-level standards.

Solvent compatibility checking

Warns when an analyte boils too close to your solvent to resolve, when two analytes will likely co-elute, and suggests solvents that clear everything in your blend.

Certificates of preparation

Each standard gets a unique ID, the person who prepared it, created and expiry dates, storage requirements derived from its components, your balance and its calibration status, and a signature block for preparer and checker. Save it to a folder on your own machine.

COA library with expiry tracking

Drop in a certificate PDF and it reads the compound, CAS, lot, purity and expiry off it — in your browser; the file is never uploaded. Tracks what you hold by room, cabinet and shelf, warns before anything expires, and exports CSV for your LIMS.

Compound reference

Physical properties, storage guidance with the reasoning shown, and practical notes on making a standard with each compound.

Workgroups

Create an account and you get a workgroup; invite colleagues and you share the tools and certificates, and see what standards are held at which site. We hold only the accounts — your inventory and certificates stay in your own folder.

How this works, plainly

These tools are in beta. They work and we use them daily, but they're still being built, and you'll find rough edges. Tell us about them — that's genuinely useful to us.

They'll become a paid subscription eventually. We'd rather say that now than surprise you later.

If you contribute a standard, you keep access free. Free through the whole beta, and a permanent founding-contributor tier after that. People who help build this shouldn't have to rent it back.

What happens to the library itself

Contributors can look up any compound in the reference library and see its measured spectrum — enough to check whether what you need is covered, and to compare against your own data.

The library isn't published as a downloadable dataset, and it isn't open-licensed. It represents a large amount of instrument time and material, and it's what makes the identification and quantitation software work. Being able to see it is free for contributors; building products on top of it is what the subscription is for.

You're contributing material, not intellectual property. Nothing you send transfers any rights in your own methods or data, and we'll never publish your name or your lab's information without asking you first.

Create a free account →
The account unlocks the tools and lets you submit. Or just email us first — that's completely fine.