Tech blog
Read more »Canned Obsolescence: Why Nitrogen Generators Belong in Your Lab
Forget about renting nitrogen tanks — laboratory applications aren’t on the same level as buying helium for a kid’s birthday balloons. As far as the old-fashioned nitrogen delivery via tank and truck, why wait to have crucial laboratory supplies left on the cleanroom stoop like old milk bottles? Critical operations can’t wait for traffic. What happens when production stops because the gas supply has depleted, or when valuable experiments or products are ruined because of moisture exposure? How much time should personnel have to spend refilling each tank? And where in the space-starved facility should the bulky supplies wait for use?
- Posted: December 26, 2019|Read more »
The Side Effects of Visual Disturbance
Sitting still can feel like a rocking ocean when staring through an unstable microscope — persistent viewing of blurry, shaky objects at high magnification causes nausea, headaches and fatigue. But the symptoms of motion sickness go beyond an upset stomach. Headaches can cause visual disturbance. If it isn’t hard enough trying to view an unsteady slide, add minor loss of vision, ocular pain and photosensitivity to the equation and find out just how efficiently the observation goes—studying contents under a microscope requires the ability to see, after all.
Nausea from motion sickness can cause sweating and vomiting, which halts production.
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Air showers are chambers or tunnels used to decontaminate personnel via air jets as they enter or exit a cleanroom. By using pressurized jet nozzle air streams, air showers blow contaminating particles away from people or items that enter, then filter pollutants and redirect the clean air out of the chamber. The showers are placed at the entrances of cleanrooms or other controlled environments to secure the biggest potential containment breach, minimizing the danger to workers or products.Click here for more Information on Cleanroom Air Showers
Stringent cleanliness requirements make air showers a standa
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Did You Know?
Fan/Filter Units Do More Than Meet ISO Requirements—they also prevent infection.Most cleanroom professionals understand that Fan/Filter Units (FFUs) capture contaminants that degrade particle-sensitive samples. But they also remove bacteria, viruses and mold spores that contribute to a host of infections.
With the threat of superbugs on the rise in medical facilities, sterilization has never been more crucial. Superbugs, or drug-resistant bacteria that cannot be killed by standard antibiotics, have the potential to cause infections that are increasingly difficult to cure. The number of deaths related to these bacteria is decreasing. But the bugs, and the danger, remain present.
Until new cures are developed to battle bacteria, the solution to preventing the spread of germs is to update cleanliness procedures in hospitals, pharmaceutical manufac
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Flush-mount pass-throughs, including CleanMount CleanSeam and CleanMount BioSafe, can be installed and ready for operation in a few minutes once the wall cut-out is prepared. The unique integral bracket mounts the chamber flush against the cleanroom wall without the use of any external fasteners or the need for caulking. With no horizontal surfaces to collect dust, the chamber exterior helps maintain the most critical cleanroom requirements.
Refer to the Operating Man
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Fire-Rated and Ruggedized wall-mount pass-throughs can be installed and ready for operation in a few minutes once the wall cut-out is prepared. The process for contractors is straightforward, requiring the parts received from Terra, two people and the following additional supplies:
- Phillips screwdrivers
- Level
- Fastener hardware appropriate for wall material (drywall or masonry, as examples). The number of fasteners needed will depend on the chamber size
- Sealant or caulking approved f
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Activated charcoal, the most common purification filtration medium, adsorbs chemicals with a molecular weight above 30 and a boiling point above 60°C. Carbon filters are also effective with many other chemicals because of their particular molecular structure.
Adsorption takes place in the active filter zone, the small cross-section of the filter bed in which the material to be removed comes in contact with the filtering medium (see illustration). This active filter zone moves upward as the filter becomes saturated. When it reaches the filter's top surface, there is an initial breakthrough by the contaminant gas; thereafter the percentage of contaminant gas that escapes filtration increases until total saturatio
Read more »Door Alignment
Proper alignment of doors will prevent excessive gas escape and ensure door sensor alignment. Some leakage, however, is normal. Because cabinets operate under varying degrees of positive pressure, Terra door gaskets are designed to allow controlled gas escape.
All cabinets are checked prior to packaging to ensure proper door alignment. However, they can come out of alignment during shipping due to the inherent flexibility of plastic.
Doors feature sensor magnets that must be aligned with the associated sensor on the desiccator door. If these magnets are misaligned, the Dual Purge™ system may not function properly, and door seals may not seat properly, allowing nitrogen leakage.
On a pr
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Standard wall-mount pass-throughs such as CleanSeam™, BioSafe® and Terra’s plastic and intermittent-seam welded steel chambers can be installed and ready for operation in a few minutes once the wall cut-out is prepared. Refer to the Operating Manual for full installation details.
The process is straightforward, requiring the parts you receive from Terra, t
Read more »Consider these variables when selecting a humidity control system:
- Humidity Requirement: Your humidity requirement is the single most important consideration. Extremely low humidity applications (under 10% RH) generally call for one of the smart controllers below.
- Access: If you access stored materials frequently, you will need a variable-purge system that can block inrushing air when a door is opened.
- Nitrogen Expense: A smart control system conserves nitrogen and reduces costs by up to 78%
- Ambient Humidity: A desiccator in a humid environment requires a more efficient humidity controller than one in an arid environment.
- Desiccator Size: Large plastic desiccators typically require more nitrogen, and a more efficient delivery system, than small ones to compens
