A to-do list with pictures
Well, one of my resolutions this December has been to clean everything I own/rent/work with.
The first realm I've decided to tackle is my lab bench. That's when I realized that I really do love cleaning my lab bench. In my time at Caltech, this is the very first time I'm doing such a thorough cleaning. There have been to occasional reorganize/wipe downs, but this time, I wanted to be thorough.
That's when I realized this is a perfect time for me to take pictures. During college, I never took enough pictures of the regular everyday things that I worked on, and it'd be nice to have pictures to look back on and smile and say "Yeah, that was a great waste setup."
Maybe, maybe not.
And then I figured, hey, since I was so proud of cleaning, I might as well take pictures along the way! Then I figured, since I'm feelign didactic and you guys might be curious, I'll take people on a tour of my lab hood.
Once upon a time, there was a hideously messy lab bench. I did not take a picture of it, sadly. But here is a picture of it once I cleaned it out and gutted it. (The pictures are from Phase II.)
The line is one of the most important pieces in the average synthetic chemist's hood. One of the tubes is full of argon and the other is for vacuum. This way, a chemist can work in nonaqueous/nonaerobic conditions. It is also one of the most fragile pieces in the hood and so extremely easy to break. It is a serious pain in the ass to clean the line and I've only had to experience the unpleasantness once in my lifetime. First you rinse with acetone. Then water. Then you soap and with a brush gently scrub the inside. Then you soak in a hydrochloric acid/methanol mixture. Then you soak in water. Then you soak in acetone. And then you take a pipe cleaner and hexanes and clean all the joints. And then you hope that's good enough, because there's not much more you can do.
Then you put the line back up and hope you don't break it along the way. (My labmate B found the camera while helping me install my guage.)
The tubes at the left are the traps. When I run the vacuum pump, I do not want my solvent getting sucked into the pump itself, as that would probably break the poor little bugger. So what we do is set up traps. When I turn on the pump, I'll put dewars filled with liquid nitrogen around the the traps. Liquid nitrogen has a temperature of -78 Celsius, so basically anything that gets pulled into the trap gets frozen out and so don't reach the pump to harm it. The traps are easily removable for facile cleaning. :)
So then I started putting things back into my hood. First, the waste jug station. Certain wastes cannot be put with others. All the organics and solvent go in one bottle (like the bacon grease jar!). Things with water in them go into aqueous waste. Things that are dry and chunky go into the solid waste container.
Then, my other secondary container, which contains solvent, cleaning solutions, and others. Amoung the coolest residents of this container is the aqua regia, "royal water". Aqua regia is the end all of cleaning solutions. It's a combination of nitric acid and hydrocholic acid and it dissolves pretty much any kind of metal crud that's caked on my glassware. It is hideous smelling and dangerous to work with but oh so cool. I've also labeled my mini solvent bottles (for easy pouring, instead of pouring out of big 4L bottles), my label (yay!), something that I once made that I haven't had time to resolve, and my UV lamp, because it's neat.
Then my stirrer/hot plates, Mags and Jake...they keep my chemistry going :)
And then my chomatography rack. This is the rack on which I run my chromatography columns to purify my products. I ought to take a picture with a column on there...I will. One day. I have labeled one of my favorite things to work with in the lab; my lead donuts! They're paper weights of sorts; they keep my glassware from tipping over.
So altogether a nice clean hood!
What's left for Phase III:
The first realm I've decided to tackle is my lab bench. That's when I realized that I really do love cleaning my lab bench. In my time at Caltech, this is the very first time I'm doing such a thorough cleaning. There have been to occasional reorganize/wipe downs, but this time, I wanted to be thorough.
That's when I realized this is a perfect time for me to take pictures. During college, I never took enough pictures of the regular everyday things that I worked on, and it'd be nice to have pictures to look back on and smile and say "Yeah, that was a great waste setup."
Maybe, maybe not.
And then I figured, hey, since I was so proud of cleaning, I might as well take pictures along the way! Then I figured, since I'm feelign didactic and you guys might be curious, I'll take people on a tour of my lab hood.
Once upon a time, there was a hideously messy lab bench. I did not take a picture of it, sadly. But here is a picture of it once I cleaned it out and gutted it. (The pictures are from Phase II.)
The line is one of the most important pieces in the average synthetic chemist's hood. One of the tubes is full of argon and the other is for vacuum. This way, a chemist can work in nonaqueous/nonaerobic conditions. It is also one of the most fragile pieces in the hood and so extremely easy to break. It is a serious pain in the ass to clean the line and I've only had to experience the unpleasantness once in my lifetime. First you rinse with acetone. Then water. Then you soap and with a brush gently scrub the inside. Then you soak in a hydrochloric acid/methanol mixture. Then you soak in water. Then you soak in acetone. And then you take a pipe cleaner and hexanes and clean all the joints. And then you hope that's good enough, because there's not much more you can do.
Then you put the line back up and hope you don't break it along the way. (My labmate B found the camera while helping me install my guage.)
The tubes at the left are the traps. When I run the vacuum pump, I do not want my solvent getting sucked into the pump itself, as that would probably break the poor little bugger. So what we do is set up traps. When I turn on the pump, I'll put dewars filled with liquid nitrogen around the the traps. Liquid nitrogen has a temperature of -78 Celsius, so basically anything that gets pulled into the trap gets frozen out and so don't reach the pump to harm it. The traps are easily removable for facile cleaning. :)
So then I started putting things back into my hood. First, the waste jug station. Certain wastes cannot be put with others. All the organics and solvent go in one bottle (like the bacon grease jar!). Things with water in them go into aqueous waste. Things that are dry and chunky go into the solid waste container.
Then, my other secondary container, which contains solvent, cleaning solutions, and others. Amoung the coolest residents of this container is the aqua regia, "royal water". Aqua regia is the end all of cleaning solutions. It's a combination of nitric acid and hydrocholic acid and it dissolves pretty much any kind of metal crud that's caked on my glassware. It is hideous smelling and dangerous to work with but oh so cool. I've also labeled my mini solvent bottles (for easy pouring, instead of pouring out of big 4L bottles), my label (yay!), something that I once made that I haven't had time to resolve, and my UV lamp, because it's neat.
Then my stirrer/hot plates, Mags and Jake...they keep my chemistry going :)
And then my chomatography rack. This is the rack on which I run my chromatography columns to purify my products. I ought to take a picture with a column on there...I will. One day. I have labeled one of my favorite things to work with in the lab; my lead donuts! They're paper weights of sorts; they keep my glassware from tipping over.
So altogether a nice clean hood!
What's left for Phase III:
- The counter space.
- Clean dirty glassware.
- Get rid of old acid bath.
- Make new acid bath.