Space requirements, laboratory

The space required for a pilot plant varies tremendously with its size and type. A small unit may require only part of a laboratory (perhaps 5—10 m ), whereas an average pilot plant of 50,000 to 200,000 may require a large room or building (perhaps 500—2000 m ), excluding extended feed or product storage. 

Throughout the book, the person in charge of day-to-day operations is referred to as the laboratory operator. This is not an administrator or supervisor located in an office down the hall or in another building. The laboratory operator must be heavily involved in all aspects of planning. Only he can estimate space requirements, check a proposed layout for practical and safe operation, and recommend allowances for future expansion. Regardless of the amount of professional assistance available, the laboratory operator can expect to burn much midnight oil. During construction he must be available at all times to take care of those numerous problems nobody had predicted. 

A partial check list of operations for an industrial chemical laboratory is shown in Table 1. The format of a formal list will vary considerably from one laboratory to another, but with such an aid, one can easily see which operations are compatible and then group these together. Those that need special treatment will readily stand out. The planner will also be able to estimate the number of rooms required for the total operation. Finally, a complete list of all laboratory functions will facilitate the next step, an estimate of space requirements. 

In an educational laboratory, fume hood space requirements are substantial, since so many students need a hood at the same time. Many operations that used to be performed on the bench must now be done in a hood for safety reasons. Inadequate hood space has caused many problems even in fairly modem university chemistry buildings. 

When it comes to laboratory storage, it is safe to say that the space required is at least twice what a planner would estimate. Samples, reagents, and spare equipment will pile up at an alarming rate. To this should be added the fact that some items will have to be stored under controlled conditions and that valuable items will need to be kept in locked storage. Flammables, even in moderate amounts, need special storage. Since regulations vary from one area to another, this matter should be discussed with local fire department officials. 

There are sometimes cases where space requirements, in spite of the most careftil planning, just do not come out the way they look on paper. This can often be the result of last minute revisions. It may be discovered during construction, for instance, that it is impossible to fit utility connections into a tight space allotted to them. Any changes required must be scrutinized by the laboratory operator, since they may have to be made in a certain way in order to accommodate future operations. 

However, the most significant development in recent years has been represented by the trend towards smaller facilities based on smaller accelerators. The work done at ETH in Zurich on the study of stripping yields, molecular dissociation and detection efficiency at low energies has led to the development of systems based on low voltage tandem machines they have demonstrated that 14C measurement is also possible using 500 kV or even 200 kV accelerators.[61,62] The main advantage in the use of dedicated 14C smaller accelerators is the reduced space requirements [63] for example, while the 3 MV VERA facility covers an area of 192 m2, the compact 500 kV AMS system at the Poznan Radiocarbon Laboratory in Poland covers an area of 30 m2 and the 200 kV MICADAS system in Zurich only about 7 m2. 

Computerized System Requirements and Electronic Records Increasingly, computerized systems and electronic records are part of a laboratory s operations. However, records may be held in both paper and electronic format and the quality assurance required depends to some extent on the format of the definitive document. Because of space requirements involved with paper records and ease of retrieval of electronic records, the latter are gaining in popularity. The same requirements that we have for paper records, e.g. change control, readability and archiving, will still apply to electronic records. For this to be achieved, new procedures may have to be developed. 

The aforementioned situation is rather perplexing. It originates in the requirement of bringing together two (or more) noncommensurable levels Hilbert space and laboratory space. Local interaction potentials permit knitting both levels. Local sources of interaction have a place (location) in a laboratory space. 

The merger is between Special Theory of Relativity and abstract quantum states through rigged Hilbert spaces the inertial frame is used to set up an abstract configuration space in laboratory space. At the abstract level, both formalisms are required. 

Before the instrument arrives at the user s laboratory, serious thought must be given to its location and space requirements. 

Take the three or five best ideas and develop them with the objective of finding out their space requirements and their equipment requirements. Develop them sufficiently to produce a first order cost comparison. In this phase of the project, the objective is to do sufficient development so that two things are established (i) which solution you have uncovered best satisfies the need at a justifiable cost, and (ii) what is the first order estimate of that cost. Warning The most overlooked items are not core to the process, but are required as support for the project, i.e., facilities to produce utilities at the capacity required sufficient laboratory, warehouse, waste disposal, or in-process storage. 

Earl Wall Basic Program of Space Requirements, Dept, of Chemistry, VPl SU, Laboratory Layout Stupes, Blacksburg VA, 1980. 

Low space requirements of devices Integration of functions like reverse transcription process (for gene expression studies), on-line measurement of double-strand DNA concentration, or real-time measurement by multi-sensor arrangements Hence, miniaturized PCR devices are very interesting for a broader application of PCR in laboratories as well as for point-of-care diagnostics, screenings, or investigations for food safety and environmental protection [7, 8]. 

The easiest inspection program to implement requires laboratory supervisors to inspect their own work space and equipment on a periodic basis. These individuals are the "first line of defense" for a program of safety excellence. They need to note items such as open containers, faulty faucets or valves, frayed wiring, broken apparatus, obstructions on floors or aisles, and unsafe clutter. They also need to follow through to make sure that any problems receive prompt resolution. 

To save space in laboratory storerooms, solutions are often stored in concentrated forms called stock solutions. For example, hydrochloric acid is typically stored as a 12 M stock solution. However, many lab procedures call for much less concentrated hydrochloric acid solutions, so chemists must dilute the stock solution to the required concentration. This is normally done by diluting a certain amount of the... 

In cases where a special laboratory cannot be established because of limited space, it must, of course, be housed in the general laboratory. This can readily be done because the space required is, in reality, quite small, the number of instruments and utensils is relatively few and the space is accordingly quite small in comparison with the area demanded by the usual analytical work. However, it should not be forgotten that the vast majority of spot tests are extremely sensitive and accordingly the working place provided for this work must be so chosen that vapors, fumes and dust must be excluded. 

Additional comment by A. Africano, Space Technology Laboratories, Ramo-Wooldridge Mr. Peckham presents a good review of the general problem in this paper but does not emphasize strongly enough that at least four measurements are required to define the standard impact test referenced in the R-W GM 67. 6-9 specification. These parameters are the directly related weight of the dropped mass, the distance dropped, the inversely related sample thickness, and the contact area between striker pin and sample. 

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