Lab Renovation: Increasing Energy Efficiency and Reducing Environmental Impact
Background: In the past few years, chemistry and materials science have begun to emphasize active pro-environmental practice—laboratory design, research policies, and use of instruments, equipment, and procedures designed to protect the environment from avoidable harm. Tenets of this approach, informally called “green chemistry” in “green labs,” include energy-efficient design, increased instrument sensitivity, micro-scale sampling, and minimized solvent use to reduce environmental exposure and chemical wastes. In addition to environmental benefits, rewards include safety, efficiency, reduced costs, and smaller space requirements. While “green” chemistry and labs have no absolute requirements, guidelines for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification have been developed.
Project Description: The Library of Congress Preservation Research and Testing Division (PRTD) has recently upgraded its 25 year old laboratories. This initiative has allowed the Library to strengthen its scientific research effort in a number of important ways. All will help the Library identify the problems that underlie deterioration of 21st-c. collections, and the scientifically-based solutions essential to protect our access to cultural and information resources.
Outcomes: The Library’s PRTD began to strengthen environmental protections in its programs in 2005, by eliminating the stockpiles of chemicals common in research laboratories, and by prioritizing adoption, adaption, and invention of new experimental methods. As a result, PRTD has reduced its need for chemicals and chemical waste disposal by approximately 50% over the previous decade.
The Library has added resource-efficient equipment and instruments to enhance research that includes important studies of polymer materials (the plastics used for magnetic tapes and computer disks). For example, a new direct analysis in real time (DART) mass spectrometer uses a few milliliters of solvent for each analysis of trace elements related to deterioration, a fraction of earlier requirements.
PRTD has incorporated numerous other instruments that eliminate solvents and greatly reduce the necessary sample size. A new laser ablator requires no solvents to prepare samples for inductively coupled plasma (ICP) spectrometry (compared to 100 ml of solvent per experiment). Other instruments that contribute to PRTD’s reduced solvent use and increased efficiency include a thermal gravimetric analyzer, differential scanning calorimeter, image analyzer, and environmental scanning electron microscope.
The work of a preservation laboratory emphasizes non- and minimally-destructive techniques to protect collection objects that must be studied. It does so in part by reducing the volume of material required for any analysis to the minimum. This also helps assure that samples are available for comparison over a long term. PRTD’s new laser ablator can take extremely small samples, including fragile and heat-sensitive materials, and can deposit samples on a wide variety of substrates at room temperature and pressure. Besides reducing potential damage to objects, and reducing environmental impact, this substantially increases sampling efficiency.
The goal of non-destructive sampling is also aided by advances in microscopy, especially in the ability of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), high-resolution optical microscopy, and fiber-optics to identify some chemical components of objects without removing samples at all. These newer techniques complement older research tools like Raman and three-dimensional fluorescent spectrometry. Using this complex of approaches reduces the need to remove samples, and the size of samples removed, to what is essential.
Environmentally protective modern chemical instruments also use less power and need less physical space. PRTD’s Agilent gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GC-MS), added in FY2006, uses 60% less power than the instruments it replaced. The new Waters gel permeation chromatography (GPCV ) system and Thermo Electron ICP use 66% less power than the older instruments. In addition, the Thermo Electron ICP occupies approximately 50% less floor space than its predecessor, purchased more than a decade ago. Efficiency, accuracy, and instrument sensitivity join environmental benefits as the results of these improvements.
For more information on resources and design of environmentally responsible labs, see the following related links:Green Chemistry: http://epa.gov/gcc/index.html
- Green labs at Harvard University green labs: http://www.greencampus.harvard.edu/labs/index.php
- Department of Energy/Environmental Protection Agency: Labs for the 21st Century, http://ateam.lbl.gov/Design-Guide/DGHtm/labs21low.energydesign.htm
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: A Design Guide for Energy-Efficient Research Laboratories, http://ateam.lbl.gov/Design-Guide/ and Environmental Energy Technologies Division, http://eetd.lbl.gov/
- Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) at http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=22