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Integrating Key Lab Design FeaturesEquipment manufacturers are developing new systems that help lab managers meet their cost and design goals.by Tim Studt
Millipore’s Milli-Q ultrapure point-of-use lab water allows water dispensing to be adaptable to changes within the lab. | Lab equipment manufacturers are working with lab managers and planners to develop and implement systems that meet the performance requirements for researchers and the operating requirements for lab managers to maintain efficient and cost-effective working environments. Five of these key lab design features include: 1) sustainability to function in today’s ecological and green environment; 2) energy efficiency to minimize operating costs; 3) flexibility to accommodate the rapidly changing technical and business environments; 4) interdisciplinary capabilities to support the rapid development of new products and processes; and 5) attractive functionality to support recruitment efforts and the installation of state-of-the-art analytical tools. Integrating all of these features into a single environment then becomes the challenge for the lab managers and planners.
In many lab equipment areas, centralized, large hard-wired (or plumbed) systems that once were considered the more economical choice are now being replaced with smaller, more modular point-of-use systems that can accommodate more stringent flexibility and cost effectiveness requirements that are now needed. Excess capacity is being replaced with the more immediate minimalist approach, while the Japanese “kanban” or “just-in-time” approach, so successfully applied to manufacturing, has now been applied to research lab resources and design principles.
Sustainability lowers costs
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines sustainability as “social and environmental practices” that protect and enhance the human and natural resources needed by future generations to enjoy a quality of life equal to or greater than our own. To satisfy lab-generated air pollution issues, “local vacuum supply in a lab, for example, permits the capture of waste solvent vapors from applications that would otherwise be exhausted to the atmosphere through fume hoods and roof exhaust fans, or condensed in vacuum tubing behind the walls and mixed unpredictably with vapors from other labs,” says Peter Coffey, VP of Sales and Marketing at Vacuubrand. “Our Vacuu-LAN networks reduce energy consumption for this resource by as much as 90%, while creating a more sustainable environment.
“Central vacuum systems also typically operate 24/7 x 365, while modular networks operate mostly on-demand,” says Coffey. “This feature alone, saves energy about 70% of the time when the buildings are unoccupied (nights and weekends). Additionally, its intermittent use allows lab managers to reduce overall energy consumption by up to 90%.”
“Lab sustainability and energy efficiency go hand-in-hand in today’s labs,” says Bob Applequist, a product manager at Labconco. “Researchers are being asked to do more with less so they look at each component to see how they can improve its performance while reducing the overall operating costs.” Those researchers are being asked to reduce all sources of possible pollution and the overall energy required to accomplish those tasks.
Labconco’s Protector XStream lab fume hood has an automatic sash stop at 18 in. to minimize energy use unless manually released. | In the fume hood arena, researchers have a larger number of design choices now than they’ve ever had in the history of research lab operations. The biggest choice researchers have to make is between using traditional fume hood systems that they’ve used for the past 30 years and are comfortable with versus the low-flow fume hoods (60 ft/sec face velocity low flow versus 100 ft/sec traditional) and the new ductless fume hood systems introduced over the past several years. “At issue in these choices is expediency versus reality and the inherent safety of these choices,” says Applequist. “Sloppy undergraduate students in an academic lab can quickly destroy the carbon filters in a ductless fume hood system, creating safety issues for lab personnel.” Ductless fume hoods work well for specific applications, but can be damaged for other applications.
Lab managers and planners have to carefully consider if the short-term, lower cost solution of using a substantially lower operating cost ductless fume hood for the single-use applications performed today will satisfy the flexibility and safety requirements of the lab for other types of applications in the future.
Often, looking at a different way to do something in the lab can be more sustainable and cost-effective than the traditional method. Recirculating coolers, like those from Julabo and others, can be more sustainable and economical than traditional tap water coolers. In one application, for example, the water and sewer costs for tap water cooling can be more than $1,300/yr, while the annual cost of an equivalent recirculating system is only $400/yr. This allows the user to amortize the recirculating cooling equipment in just four years, while saving (in this typical rotary evaporator application) more than 700,000 L/yr of tap water and reducing an equivalent amount of waste water. Recirculating coolers also offer researchers more options, such as digital temperature controls, consistent or varying by design flow rates, and the ability to easily connect one cooler to multiple systems. These devices are also flexible in that they can be moved anywhere in the lab without any additional plumbing.
Interdisciplinary labs
In a similar tone to Applequist’s comment on sustainability and energy efficiency, the flexibility of a research lab is directly tied to a lab’s utilization of interdisciplinary research options.
“All research managers want to hire a number of different researchers, so that they can support the different aspects of their research projects and cover their ‘bases’ better,” says Applequist. “There are fewer new dedicated research facilities today; lab managers want the flexibility to move quickly from one funded research topic to another, so they build flexible labs.”
From a ducted fume hood standpoint, this design flexibility is partially reflected in how the fume hoods are connected and fixtured. “The ducts and mechanical systems now run over the lab ceiling instead of in or behind lab walls or in corridors,” says Applequist. “This makes the fume hood systems easier and faster to retrofit when specific modifications or changes need to be made.”
“When flexible lab space is built, there are two ways to make it flexible,” says Coffey. “One is to provide all the capability that you might ever need—the high-cost option—or to use systems that allow you to use only what you need, when you need it—the flexible option. Our local vacuum networks are completely modular, so they can be put where you need them, expanded as necessary, and reconfigured if needs change.”
Vacuubrand’s VACUU-LAN network pump installed beneath a modular fume hood supports up to 8 vacuum workstations with 2 mbar vacuum. | Lab water systems are also being changed in this direction. Lab water is the most commonly used solvent in labs and often constitutes more than 99% of the mass of solutions used in experiments. Pure lab water also has an inherent cost and in order to optimize the lab’s operating costs while maintaining the appropriate technical standards, it’s important to use the appropriate water quality and quantity for each application. “Point-of-use lab water delivery systems are now being employed more often than centralized lab water systems,” says Greg Hoff, media relations manager at Millipore. “Point-of-use systems are more flexible and cost effective than the hard plumbing used in central lab water delivery systems. These systems are more adaptable for each application—users can customize the filtration or polishing needed for each application, such as those in pharmaceutical and environmental applications.”
The overall modular approach to supplying lab resources allows lab managers to provide exactly the appropriate amount of specific resources to each lab, or leave some out altogether. Each scientific function gets the resources it needs without interference from other researchers’ requirements. This approach can also be cost-effective as well as provide higher performance capabilities that otherwise might be available.
Ease of use and safety
As noted above, the implementation of cost-effective, sustainable, flexible, interdisciplinary features in a lab design are only as good as how easy they are to use and—overriding all else—how safe they are. Established lab safety rules and quickly changing research projects require the lab’s interdisciplinary researchers to use every piece of equipment in the lab. As a result, ease of use becomes even more essential or else the equipment quickly becomes unused, non-cost-effective and even prone to error or safety issues during inappropriate or uneducated operation.
The safety and reliability aspects of incidental use of equipment must also be considered when making sustainable and cost-effective equipment choices. Someone using a fume hood as an emergency storage facility following a lab incident may cause additional problems if the hood is unducted or inadequately sized. Similarly, a centralized resource system with a supply or safety problem (contamination, power failure, maintenance, etc.) will transmit that problem to all labs within its network, creating a universal problem. A problem in a modular network will only create issues for those directly connected to that node, which in many situations can be quickly replaced or substituted with an unused system.
An additional feature of modular systems is that many of these systems are now being equipped with their own Internet addresses. This will make them remotely accessible or monitored and possibly even controlled by researchers over the web—and at the exact point of use, unlike a centralized supply system.
Recruitment tools
If you're looking to hire, sustainability, energy efficiency, interdisciplinary, and flexibility are all hot words to entice future researchers. Scientists and engineers are more likely to look favorably on facilities with these aspects than those without. If the lab is not sustainable now, potential recruits know that some time in the future, they’re going to have to make it so. If it's not flexible, researchers are going to feel restricted or limited in the projects they will be performing—or it's going to cost them some valuable portion of their grant monies to change it.
Many modular systems provide performance advantages. “Our modular vacuum systems provide bench vacuum that is almost two orders of magnitude better than many central vacuum systems,” says Coffey. “They also eliminate the interference between scientists that often arises when chemists need deep, stable vacuum and biologists need short bursts of vacuum that cause pressure instabilities. The quality of the vacuum supply, the independence from other users, and the ability to control bench vacuum as you would a dedicated pump, reduces the need for supplemental vacuum pumps and frees up bench space.”
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