Archive for the 'Lab Facilities' Category

As a grad student, most of the time you’re a chemist, but sometimes you’re a teacher, a secretary, a copy editor, a graphics artist, or even a repairman. Our group has some pretty old lab space—and it shows. Over the last 25 years, work areas have been abused, storage areas have been neglected, and machines have deteriorated due to wear and tear. You can stumble into some pretty gross situations, as I did two weeks ago when I needed to cool down a flask. I opened the lid to our ice machine and was greeted by an arctic sea instead of the usual pillowy mounds of crushed ice:

There’s a drain at the bottom of the ice chest so that the water won’t build up as the ice melts. Obviously, something was clogged. The first order of business was to bail out all of the ice. This took a while and was no fun (read: brrrrrr). Once the ice was gone, we were left with 30 gallons or so of water with nasty gobs of slimy, black mold. It was at this point that I unearthed the following items:

• 1 bottle of Poland Spring water
• 1 can of Sierra Mist
• 2 bottles of fruit-flavored Snapple Iced Tea (1 half-consumed)
• 1 collapsed box of horchata (sweetened rice beverage)

You can click that picture to enlarge it. Be sure to notice the floaters. Gross. To my dismay, it turned out that the drain grating was clear, meaning the obstruction was in the drain line.  I enlisted the help of the building’s plumber, who conveniently, was busy installing the successor to the DG3000. After some handy wet-vac work followed by a thorough cleaning and bleaching, we were back in business. And since I was already in a tidying mood, I decided to conduct a little preventative maintenance by backflushing the air filter. It was a good thing, too. Just look at the number of grody dirt balls that came out of there:

After popping the filter back into place and starting the compressor, the machine was churning out ice within ten minutes. Instant gratification. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, you can check out the action on video.

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