Monthly Archives: September 2016

Water’s ability to dissolve compounds, along with its polarity, bonding, melting, boiling and freezing points, heat absorption, and vaporization characteristics arguably make it the most versatile substance we know. It’s also ubiquitous and plentiful: the earth can’t live without it, most plants and animals can’t exist without it, and scientists can’t operate labs without it.

Water is the most common reagent used in the laboratory, and while water quality can often be overlooked, the grade of water being used in an application is critical. Minute traces of salts or biological contaminants can result in unfortunate consequences when culturing cells or performing analytical measurements of biological macromolecules.

IsoDry desiccator cabinets are the latest, patent-pending innovation in desiccators from Terra Universal. Desiccators are containers designed to reduce relative humidity (RH) for moisture-sensitive stored items, either by purging the container consistently with nitrogen, using silica gel desiccants or pulling vacuum. The IsoDry desiccators use nitrogen to accomplish this task, both in achieving and maintaining a humidity “set-point.”

How do IsoDry Desiccators Work?

Terra’s desiccator cabinets rely on a basic tenet of natural physics: buoyancy. Buoyancy is a function of density and mass between at least one fluid and another material. In our applications, it relies specifically on the fact that purified nitrogen is less dense than atmospheric air. Pumping nitrogen into an enclosed environment pressurizes both the air and the nitrogen, and the difference in densities causes the nitrogen to push the ambient air downward. RB

Pass-through chambers streamline workflow by giving personnel a fast, efficient way to transfer objects into, and out of, spaces with different ISO ratings. Facilities save man-hours and expense by avoiding time-consuming gowning. How else can pass-through chambers help the lab’s bottom line?

High-speed roll-up cleanroom doors for fast, clean transfer of personnel and large equipment (using pallet jacks, hand trucks or casters for mobility) are already available from Terra Universal. New from the leader in modular cleanrooms, however, is the same space-saving door configured as a pass-through chamber. A touch-screen control panel allows automatic push-button opening and closing of roll-up doors on either side. Transfer of large or unwieldy equipment or supplies in and out of the cleanroom becomes faster and easier.