Evolution in capital equipment slowed by client concerns, preferences By the editors of R&D Magazine Fifth of a six-part series of articles based on research revealing the current state of, and likely challenges for, laboratory design. Refer to Part 1 (July, page 1) for information on how data were collected. Series produced with sponsorship support by Labconco Inc., VWR, Kewaunee Scientific Corp., and Biofit Engineered Products. Material originally published in a different form in the May 2006 issue of R&D Magazine. Flexible casework designs now include overhead service carriers for quick access to gases, water, point exhaust, and other infrastructure items. This example from Marl, Germany, has an unusual hanging strip for electrical supply. Photo: Henn Architekten/ Science to Business Center Nanotronics. Click to enlarge. Unlike the array of scientific instrumentation, the capital equipment in research laboratories hasn’t changed substantially over the past 40 years. Casework has gone through cycles of metal, wood, and plastic materials, but until fairly recently remained restricted to cabinetry fixed to the floor. The majority of fume hood systems are still constant volume—with variable air volume (VAV) and low-flow systems gaining popularity for new construction and gut renovations. Some changes have been made in the area of access to gases, vacuum, compressed air, and electrical outlets, with overhead boom systems and utility drops, but these initially European-based designs have only recently been installed in new lab projects. Other lab essentials, such as lighting, safety systems (eyewash stations, showers, and fire extinguishing systems), storage systems, sinks, coolers/heaters, waste systems, furniture, flooring, ceiling tiles, and non-analytical bench top instruments (stirrers, centrifuges, distillation systems, pipetting systems, etc.) have seen some evolution, particularly in the category of high-tech lighting. High-performance polymers have overtaken glass in most non-heating applications, and stain- and scratch-resistant coatings are now applied to numerous surfaces. Some of the most visible changes have been in computer and software systems, with laptop computers now proliferating in most labs and high-performance data centers becoming increasingly essential for some applications. Bar-coding systems represent a major change in lab equipment over the past 10 years, simplifying the tracking and monitoring of large numbers of samples. There are additional technologies in development that are likely to expand this area to further shrink the size of the bar coding label and enhance its usefulness. In the same technology arena, there are RFID (radio frequency identification) systems that are in broad use in the commercial and industrial sector that have yet to be integrated into lab environments. The cost, ease-of-use, and reliability of these systems continue to improve, and researchers are likely to see implementations of these in the lab for inventorying of instrumentation and high-cost materials as one of the first applications. Automation systems Automation systems made a large impact in the drug discovery and biotechnology arena over the past 10 years where large numbers of samples need to be processed for combinatorial analyses. Automation technology was mostly responsible for the sequencing of the human genome early in the 21st century. These automation systems have mostly matured and there have been few new life science-based offerings over the past several years. The life science applications of these systems are still time consuming, and the capital equipment is costly and requires large amounts of space, set-up, and maintenance. Researchers are now applying smaller systems with microfluidic operations that use less sample volumes, less solvents, and require less cleanup and waste disposal. The overall cost savings with microfluidic sample processing systems is enormous, along with the ability to process more samples in a shorter period of time. These types of systems are likely to proliferate in the lab of the future, and the large automation systems are likely to mostly disappear except for specialized applications. Automation systems in other areas will continue to be evaluated. They are inherently faster, more efficient, more precise, more sensitive, and, with their ability to operate 24/7, they provide more throughput than manual systems. The final decision in each case will ultimately be based upon economics. Automation systems, for example, are used to process small numbers of samples of foods, minerals, metals, and other inorganic materials for quality assurance applications. These applications are not as easily changed to microfluidic systems and will continue unchanged for at least the next five or more years. Some of these systems are tied to x-ray analyses, which are even less likely to be changed. Where’s my cabinet The ability to quickly change over from one research project to another has become one of the dominant issues in the design of new research labs. These flexibility demands have spurred recent changes in the design of casework systems. While two-thirds of all research labs still have 80% or more fixed casework systems, the trend toward movable casework continues to erode that ratio. Most current lab configurations still install a substantial amount of fixed casework along the walls, but often leave an open “dance floor” where flexible systems can be positioned. Nearly 70% of the respondents said their labs had at least some flexible casework, but labs where the proportion is greater than 50% are still relatively rare. Click to enlarge. In some of these flexible casework designs, the change has been as simplistic as just adding lockable wheels to undercounter cabinets. In other situations, completely new casework systems have been custom-designed. The open flexible design at R&D’s 2004 Lab of the Year, the James H. Clark Center at Stanford Univ., Calif., encompassed custom designs that extended into office systems; researchers are able to choose their individual setups from a standard “kit of parts.” The Stanford systems included both dry and wet lab systems, with the latter being flexible to an unusual degree. The wet lab systems connect to overhead waste systems through a pumping system within each casework unit. The initial cost, installation, and continuing maintenance issues with movable wet lab systems are likely to limit their implementation for some time. The Stanford system also initially included movable fume hoods with flexible connections to ductwork. There were initial concerns about the safety of these systems with regard to HVAC control function as well as containment. The extreme flexibility of the Stanford system was largely an experiment in lab design, and many lessons are likely to be learned over the next several years. European flexible casework systems now involve wet benches (foreground) that include integrated waste pumps and overhead waste plumbing and disposal systems that are integrated into the overhead service carrier systems. Photo: Waldner. Click to enlarge. Supplies above Overhead service carriers, or booms, were initially seen in European research labs, and began making serious inroads in the U.S. starting about five years ago. They have taken hold in the flexible lab marketplace and numerous stateside vendors now offer stock units, as well as custom-made versions. Overhead cariers come in myriad configurations and can include point exhaust systems and any number of gas, water, vacuum, electricity, or air hookups. These carriers are intended to work in concert with a modular supply system that allows the whole “wing” to be easily repositioned to a different section of the lab. They can work with or without drop ceilings, although they are often used in areas without a drop ceiling so that repositioning is more easily implemented. Quick-connect fittings are intended to make the carriers a true “plug-and-play” tool—an example of how design that would once have been considered futuristic has taken hold as a reality in many labs. As the price of flexible furniture and its attendant supply units continue to fall relative to conventional designs, adaptability should continue to be a theme in tomorrow’s labs. Catch my contaminants The whole idea of using a fume hood is to safely dispose of potentially harmful contaminants released during an experiment or a spill. A good safety and reliability record has been established with traditional constant volume models over the past 40 years. Since the early 1990s, the costs of using these hoods have attracted ever- increasing scrutiny, especially as the price of energy has continued to escalate. The cost of operating dozens of single-pass constant volume fume hoods in a large research facility can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars on an annual basis, not to mention high first cost of the large air handling and exhaust systems that support them. Substantial research has been performed during the past decade on the concept of low-flow or “high-efficiency” fume hoods (face velocities of <100 ft/min vs. the traditional 100 ft/min “standard”). Such hoods offer great promise; however, concerns about safety, combined with a higher first cost, have limited their broad implementation. In R&D Magazine’s researcher survey, respondents perceived low-flow models as less safe than older designs (1=good and 5=poor): • Constant volume 1.79 • 2-position constant volume 2.03 • Variable air volume 1.99 • Low-flow (<100 ft/min) 2.89 Survey respondents do appear to have absorbed the message that low-flow hoods save money, assigning the following rankings of their perceptions of the hoods’ energy conservation characteristics (1=good; 5=poor): • Constant volume 3.04 • 2-position constant volume 2.53 • Variable air volume 2.10 • Low-flow (<100 ft/min) 1.92 Despite the common wisdom regarding the price premium for high-efficiency models, researchers don’t think there are actually major price differences among the available hood styles, ranking initial cost of each type as follows (1=cheaper; 5=higher): • Constant volume 2.24 • 2-position constant volume 2.44 • Variable air volume 2.72 • Low-flow (<100 ft/min) 2.30 As in every facet of our survey, the results reflect user perceptions rather than an objective analysis of equipment characteristics. It appears that vendors who make high-performance and VAV hoods, and the designers that prefer them, still have some work ahead of them in convincing users that these hoods are as safe as, or safer than, the traditional CV versions. Most users still believe CV hoods represent the safest option, even though VAV models now have a long track record of safe performance combined with energy efficiency. In addition, the relationship between the initial cost of the hoods and the long-term payback, as well as the designers’ ability to save money by downsizing HVAC systems to work with low-flow models, appears to be poorly understood.