Laboratory flooring

The most common spill on a laboratory floor is water, not generally considered hazardous. It may, however, create hazardous conditions by making the floor slippery. It is dangerous to walk on a wet floor with certain types of soles. A wet area should always be blocked off until it is dry. Mop and bucket should always be available close by, not in a janitor s closet down the hall. String mops are superior to sponge mops for getting the floor dry. 

An accomplished architect once recommended a certain type of rubber tile for a laboratory floor because his data indicated its superior resistance to acids. He had not bothered to find out whether or not acid spills would be a problem in this case. They would not, in fact. Solvent spills, on the other hand, were quite likely to occur, and the recommended tile had poor solvent resistance. This example illustrates two things the importance of the laboratory operator s involvement with details that are sometimes overlooked even by experts, and the need to study each laboratory s requirements individually. 

When vinyl is chosen for laboratory floor use, the heavier commercial grade is recommended over the thinner material often used in homes. The cushioned type, while easier to walk on, does not have sufficient ability to withstand laboratory wear and tear. Neither does the no-wax type. Good maintenance should include regular waxing, which will greatly increase the ability of any flooring to resist damage from wear and from chemical spills. 

Figure 2 Laboratory floor plan as submitted to engineering firm.

Laboratory rooms intended for toxic work should be provided with adjacent shower and change facilities. The layout must not require freshly showered personnel to track back through the area that they might have just contaminated. All drains, including those in laboratory floors, should have deep traps and be directed to a toxic sump. Airlocks will help prevent toxic fumes from spreading to non-toxic areas in the event of a failure of a primary containment cabinet. Check valves in the incoming water lines will prevent contamination of potable water supplies when pressure is lost. 

Fig. 10.3. Vibration spectra of laboratory floors, measured in four locations in the Electrotechnical Laboratory, Ibaraki, Japan, (a) Basement, (b) first floor, (c) first floor, another location, and (d) third floor. (From Okano et al., 1987.)...

Design requirements called for a still to supply an average household (250 to 500 gallons per day) be sized to pass through a door 26 inches wide be thermally self-sufficient—i.e., stay at operating temperature without additional heat—and start and stop on demand without supervision. The Aquastill (9) meets these specifications on the laboratory floor and in the field on noncorrosive waters. For prolonged use on sea water, changes will be required in construction materials for the steam blower and residue extraction pumps. 

And yet alchemical laboratories proliferated in the early modern period as alchemy s visibility rose. In the cities, courts, and cloisters of the Holy Roman Empire, practitioners and patrons with the means to do so built special buildings for their alchemical work, while others improvised with whatever spaces were available kitchens, churches, apothecary shops, and workshops. Archival remnants of some of these spaces do, in fact, remain these bits and pieces—inventories, architectural details, supply orders, and reports—offer a glimpse of their contours and how space organized the activity inside that can complement the work of archaeologists. This view from the laboratory floor, as it were, not only can begin to fill in some very basic details about how space was employed to organize the production... 

By virtue of their solvent-resistant property, polysulphide polymers are used extensively as integral fuel tank sealants. The construction industry utilises this property mostly in sealants in jet fuel aprons, laboratory floors, airport pavements and for use in petrol stations. Specific applications will be discussed separately in section 7.4. 

A drop test arrangement can be easily built and applied in the field. The equipment consists of a heavy plate (1) made from steel with at least 20 mm thickness, a concrete slab, or - in the most simple case - a stone laboratory floor on which a... 

Cellulose nitrate was first discovered in 1845 by the Swiss-German chemist Christian Friedrich Schonbein (1799-1868). The story is told that Schonbein used his wife s cotton apron to clean up some nitric acid that he had spilled on his laboratory floor. He was amazed to discover that the cotton and nitric acid reacted to form a new compound that exploded when heated, releasing a puff of black smoke. He immediately recognized the potential application for the new... 

Laboratory (suspended) Laboratory (ceiling, by impaction) Laboratory (floor) ... 

This machine is, of course, properly grounded, and the laboratory floor is of the conductive type. All operating personnel wear grounding devices when hydrogen is in use, and the room is vented with two large-capacity fans installed in the ceiling. 

In addition to fire protection there are other potential hazards which may also be reduced by construction details and choices of materials. In Section C of this chapter, under the topic Laboratory Facilities for each class of laboratories, many of the features stipulated characteristics of finish materials. As a general principle, laboratory floor coverings, wall finishes, and table and bench tops... 

Mercury is dense (specific gravity of just under 13.6 at 4"C (39.2"F)) and has a high surface tension and low viscosity. As a result, it tends to break up into small droplets when it is poured or spilled. Anyone who has tried to pick up small droplets using a stiff piece of paper can attest to the appropriateness of the alternate name quicksilver. As the droplets are disturbed as, for example, when walked upon on the laboratory floor, they tend to break up into smaller and smaller droplets, eventually becoming too small to see. In a laboratory where mercury has been in use for an extended period of time, it is instructive to run a pen knife in the cracks in a tile floor or in the seams where cabinets and bench tops fit together. Invariably, small droplets of mercury will be found. 

The incinerated dead and the mutilated living, the fused glass microscope slides on the medical school laboratory floor, melted metal beams, blistered ceramic tiles, instantly vaporized homes, all bore testimony of the power unleashed that August morning. Almost incalculable power. 

The walk-in hood is a chemical fume hood that is mounted directly on the laboratory floor or a slightly raised chemical resistance platform. It is used for the ventilation of larger pieces of equipment, with the advantage that these pieces of equipment can be wheeled in and out of the walk-in hood. The walk-in hood typically uses two separate sashes. 

Children s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, Vascular Biology Program, Department of Surgery, 1 Blackfan Circle, Karp Family Research Laboratories, Floor 12, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA... 

Wherever possible, mixing vessels should be supported above the laboratory floor (or benchtop for small vessels), as this provides access for observations of the vessel base. In all situations, the vessel, drive, bounding box, and any other equipment should be mounted in a strong frame that provides support and prevents excessive vibration. 

Sensitive explosive azides can be also easily ignited by electrostatic discharge (ESD). Therefore, wear ESD protective clothing (or at least cotton clothes) and antistatic shoes. The laboratory floor should be ESD conductive or there should be at least static dissipative mats (ESD mats) installed in front of the fume hood where the azides will be synthesized and handled. 

A tour of the interstitial floors to observe the installation of the AWS pipe answered any questions about the ambient temperature of the space. While the interstitial floors do not appear to be climate controlled, the windows on these floors do not allow direct heating by sunlight and each interstitial is sandwiched between two climate-controlled laboratory floors. The owner s maintenance personnel, who work regularly on the interstitial floors, said that the summer time temperatures are not at all excessive. 

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