As time goes on, workplaces are becoming increasingly complex places. Technicians are increasingly required to interact with and make use of all kinds of advanced and sophisticated technical equipment. The equipment may serve to help them complete their tasks, keep them safe, or perform other kinds of crucial functions.
Scientific and research labs are frequently at the forefront of such developments. Since it’s impossible to reliably perform scientific experiments without setting up sterile and highly controlled conditions, labs often need some highly sophisticated tools just to be able to carry on their day-to-day operations. One of the most important of these tools is laminar flow hoods.
RDM Industrial Products proudly manufactures many of these.
What Are Laminar Flow Hoods?
RDM Laminar Flow Workstation – Bench-top Model LF-102P-B-SS-SHROUD-01
Before we tell you about the features and significance of these machines, just what are they? Briefly, laminar flow workstations are devices meant to prevent small particle contaminants in the air from getting into important lab samples. In total, they consist of a workbench or workstation which is typically enclosed by a stainless steel cabinet. Also, parts of the enclosure — especially the front-facing wall — are usually made of glass or some other durable but transparent material. This allows lab workers to be able to see what is going on inside of the hood. Some hoods allow workers to open a small door that lets them reach inside to retrieve or manipulate samples, while others — meant to handle more sensitive material — only allow researchers to reach in through small pre-prepared openings with gloved hands.
What enables these clean air workstations to work their magic, though, is an air filter that purifies the air in the enclosure and continually removes any possible impurities from it. It does this by way of what’s known as a laminar flow.
After the filter sucks in air and removes impurities from it, it must release it in such a way that the other air in the workstation environment, which has not yet been filtered, is not disturbed. If the other air is disturbed, its impurities will mix with the purified air and nullify the actions of the filter. Thus, the filter must release air smoothly and carefully so that it flows entirely parallel to the currents of unpurified air. The filter then takes in more unpurified air and repeats the process. This is called a laminar flow.
Why Use Laminar Flow Hoods?
Now that you know what clean air workstations do, the new question to ask is how and why they might be useful in a work environment. Here are just a few reasons why you might need a laminar flow workstation:
- Keep Samples Sterile: This has already been discussed in general terms, but it’s worthwhile to provide a few specific examples. Any experiment or operation which is dependent on highly precise chemical reactions occurring or which even the slightest pollutant has the power to hinder should be done inside of clean air benches. This includes things like virus isolation, the testing of drugs and treatments upon bacterial or viral cultures, or even the soldering of microprocessors. Our civilization would not be able to function as we know it without these things, thus underscoring the importance of clean air benches.
- Help Keep Lab Workers Safe: Sterile environments aren’t just important to make sure that experiments go right; they can also be crucial to ensuring workplace safety. Air contaminants need not always be annoying, but essentially harmless gases; in some cases, they can be quite dangerous things. Certain important chemical reactions may produce hazardous by-products. In such cases, effective and fine-grained filters are essential to removing toxins and making sure that all lab workers are safe. Dangerous viruses also need to be kept tightly segregated from the rest of the lab to allow researchers to work with them while staying out of danger. Laminar flow workstations are important for this as well.
- They Are Eco-Friendly and Can Save You Money: Laminar flow hood can sometimes be costly to install, but over time, they tend to pay for themselves. By recycling air and safely disposing of carbon and other pollutants, they see the environment. Also, since RDM’s models run on electricity and consume energy efficiently, they can end up saving your lab money on power costs.
Different Types of Laminar Flow Hoods
Broadly speaking, you can divide laminar flow workstations into two basic types depending on how they suck in and expel air. There are trade-offs associated with each, so you must decide which one better suits the needs of your lab:
- Vertical Laminar Flow Hoods: Vertical laminar flow hoods take in air from the top of the unit and then release it vertically so that it flows down toward the bottom. Vertical hoods tend to be easy to install and compact. Their filters can be easily attached to many ordinary laboratory workbenches.
- Horizontal Laminar Flow Hoods: Horizontal laminar flow hoods send air flowing horizontally, moving it from the back of each unit and out toward the front. As such, horizontal laminar flow workbenches tend to have significantly greater depth than the vertical sort does. Since the filtering process makes air currents flow past one another horizontally without mutual disturbance, these laminar flow hoods tend to be quite sensitive. That makes them ideal environments for handling small and sensitive samples that have very low contamination tolerances.
RDM Industrial Products produces factory-direct and industrial-quality versions of both of these major types. And in case you didn’t know, most of our products are proudly manufactured in the USA.
Some Key Features
The centerpiece of every laminar flow hood is its filter. Broadly speaking, two kinds of filters can come with their special workstations, each with their particular features and capabilities. The first type of filter is a HEPA (or High-Efficiency Particulate Air) filter. It removes 99.99% of all particles from the air with diameters of 0.3 microns or more. The second type is called a ULPA (or Ultra Low Particulate Air) filter. It can remove 99.9995% of all particles from the air that are 0.12 microns in diameter or larger.
All of RDM’s laminar flow hoods can meet minimal HEPA standards, so they are all at least HEPA workstations. If you need something a bit more sensitive or heavy-duty than HEPA workstations, we can gladly build workbenches for you that use even more powerful filters.
As mentioned, our workstations all run on electricity. They are also extremely quiet, generating only about 50 decibels of noise. Which about as loud as a drizzle of moderate rainfall. They come with LED light fixtures to keep the work environment illuminated. And you also have the option of making them from static dissipative, flame-resistant, or chemical-resistant materials.
Have a look at RDM’s array of laminar flow hoods to get a fuller sense of your customization options.
Significance for Today’s Workplaces
Some of the most important scientific, medical, bacteriological, pharmaceutical, or engineering work that is done in our world today — work without which it would be impossible to sustain our civilization — is done with the assistance of laminar airflow hoods. These devices are critical to ensuring worker safety in many of these occupations.
A laminar flow hood clean air workstation isn’t just some arcane piece of tech relegated to obscure and dirty labs. They have helped make critical advancements in workplace safety. They have helped us to do things that we couldn’t otherwise do. Thanks to RDM’s manufacturer-direct models, you too can push your workplace to the next level.
Give our team a call today – 1-877-485-1482 – and let us help you with your next clean air workstation(s) solution.