Clean Room:
The new Clean Lab Facility at the USGS Woods Hole Science Center was completed during March 2006. We renovated 500 square feet of space into three cascading clean areas: a Class 100,000 lab, Class 10,000 lab, and an isolated balance room. These rooms were meticulously constructed, avoiding all metal materials. Instead, construction materials such as polypropylene, epoxy, and wood were used. In this corrosion-free environment, the WHSC has the ability to prepare water, sediment, and tissue samples for low-concentration, environmentally sensitive, and chemical analyses.
Figure 1. Sample and glassware storage, along with a Milli-Q deionized water purification system and a five-foot laminar-flow exhausting fume hood. |
Figure 2. Opposite Figure 1 in the smaller, Class 10,000 clean room space, the room also contains a five-foot laminar-flow clean bench and sample prep space with epoxy counters and six IT ports for digital data transfer. |
Figure 3. Next to the hood in the class 10,000 clean space, there are drawers, IT ports, and epoxy counter space. The rooms feature all-plastic construction, seamless floors, and plastic accessories. |
This low-particulate, positive pressure laboratory space features contain a balance room, a microwave acid digestion system, acid baths, Teflon labware, and Milli-Q deionizing water purification. Three laminar-flow clean benches and three exhausting fume hoods have been installed and are ready for distilling acids, performing hot plate acid digestions, and setting up water filtration systems for low-level environmental analysis of seawater or fresh water. This area has restricted access for lab personnel in order to keep the space as clean as possible. Employees in this clean facility enter the lab through an antechamber and don Tyvek personal protective equipment, such as shoe covers and lab coats, in order to keep the particulate matter in the rooms to a minimum. The rooms have an intricate HVAC system using high-efficiency particulate air, or HEPA, filters and pressure differentials to reduce airborne contaminants and to create directional air flow out of the room.
Figure 4. The large, Class 100,000 clean room space is adjacent to the smaller, Class 10,000 space. Pictured here is the exhausting fume hood with variable speed drives, and a workbench with epoxy counters. The workbench also has a pass-through window to the non-clean lab portion of the facility for transferring samples into the clean space. |
Figure 5. Adjacent to the large, Class 100,000 clean room space, is a separate room pictured here. The room has all plastic and wood construction as well as an epoxy balance table, a dedicated balance, and separate controls to adjust air flow and pressure to minimize air interferences with microbalance measurements. |
Figure 6. The large clean space contains two five-foot laminar flow clean benches with an observation window to the hallway. The lighting was selected because the unique design seals the metal fluorescent bulbs in a plastic casing. |
Figure 7. The connection between the large and small clean room spaces is shown here, along with the pass-through window mentioned in the caption for Figure 4. |
Figure 8. The vestibule from the hallway is secured by key-card access. Once the outer door closes, technicians will change into Tyvek lab coats, plastic clogs, and Tyvek booties prior to swiping their cards to enter the large, Class 100,000 space through a second door from the vestibule. |
Figure 9. The balance room (also pictured in Figure 5) contains a dedicated balance, an epoxy balance table, maple cabinetry, and a pass-through window to move samples from the balance room to the existing laboratory store room. |
This low-particulate, positive pressure laboratory space features contain a balance room, a microwave acid digestion system, acid baths, Teflon labware, and Milli-Q deionizing water purification. Three laminar-flow clean benches and three exhausting fume hoods have been installed and are ready for distilling acids, performing hot plate acid digestions, and setting up water filtration systems for low-level environmental analysis of seawater or fresh water. This area has restricted access for lab personnel in order to keep the space as clean as possible. Employees in this clean facility enter the lab through an antechamber and don Tyvek personal protective equipment, such as shoe covers and lab coats, in order to keep the particulate matter in the rooms to a minimum. The rooms have an intricate HVAC system using high-efficiency particulate air, or HEPA, filters and pressure differentials to reduce airborne contaminants and to create directional air flow out of the room.
To request more information on the lab's capabilities, please contact:
John Bratton, jbratton@usgs.gov, 508-457-2254
Michael Bothner, mbothner@usgs.gov, 508-457-240
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