Guidelines for care & Use of Dry Solvent Stills [Example]

2. Cleanliness in the Research Laboratory
1. Clean up Research Lab benches occasionally. Wash your hands at the end of each lab session if you‟ve
been working with chemicals at all. Check to make certain that any gloves you‟ve been wearing don‟t have
pinhole leaks or tears. Use every means necessary to avoid ingesting chemicals in the lab or even touching
them.
2. If you must leave lab equipment, glassware, notebooks, etc., on the bench until the next day or work
session, at least properly remove, store, and otherwise secure laboratory chemicals. Make a habit of
maintaining an orderly work bench area by removing unnecessary sheets of paper, soiled paper towels,
broken glass, empty bottles, Pasteur pipets or anything else that doesn‟t belong there.
3. Wear lab coats when working with chemicals if the possibility exits that you will contaminate your
clothing. Outrageously Kaleidoscopic or unpleasantly odoriferous lab coats should be washed occasionally,
although it probably isn‟t a good idea to mix them in with household laundry. Hang them up in your lab
before lunch breaks in the graduate student lounge.
4. It is forbidden to eat, drink or smoke in the lab or experimental work area. Such activities should occur
outside the labs in designated areas. All research labs in Salem Hall have entranceway student desk areas,
separated from the actual labs by walls. You may eat and drink there. However, it is preferable to make
use of the graduate student lounge in room #112B. Even chewing gum in the lab should be avoided.
5. Do not use laboratory refrigerators which contain any lab chemical whatsoever as repositories for food.
Do not use ice from the undergraduate ice machine in room # 104 for any purpose other than experimental
work. Since students tend to use laboratory containers, such as contaminated beakers, to scoop ice from
this machine, you may end up with something unpleasant in your soft drink!
6. Laboratory glassware should be cleaned in laboratory sinks with soap and hot water. “Liqui-nox”
(Fisher catalog # 04-322-158, gallon size) liquid soap concentrate and scouring soap powder, brand name
“Sparkleen”(Fisher catalog # 04-320-4, 3lb. box), are located in the stockroom, room #110 if your research
or teaching group has not purchased it already. Wear gloves while cleaning with properly chosen cleaning
brushes. Check for tears and holes in the gloves. Don‟t allow dirty glassware to pile-up around sinks to an
unmanageable level. This increases the likelihood of breakage and discourages the habit of examining each
piece individually for degree of chemical contamination before washing. Rinse dirty glassware with labeled
bottles of acetone if necessary. Highly contaminated, corrosive cleaning solutions, prepared from very
acidic or alkaline chemicals, should in some cases be packaged in bottles when spent and taken to room
#20, the solvent storage room, properly labeled for chemical waste company removal. In particular, spent
chromerge (sulfuric acid and chromic acid combination cleaning solution) should be poured back into 2.5
liter acid bottles and sent out with the waste company.
7. The following cleaning solutions, as described in the Chemical Technician‟s Handbook (located in the
stockroom, room # 110), can be used to clean glassware in research labs. Generally, undergraduate
teaching labs will not require such strong cleaning solutions. Spent, highly acidic or alkaline cleaning
solutions of common mineral acids or bases (e.g., nitric acid, sodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide in
ethanol, etc.) which have been used in research labs should be neutralized completely before disposal.
Chromerge Cleaning Solutions: Obtain one 25ml bottle of chromerge from chemical storage room (room
#19), composed of chromium trioxide, or chromic acid, and add contents directly to a standard 2.5 liter size
bottle of concentrated sulfuric acid. Add approximately 5ml at a time, recap the acid bottle, and shake well.
The precipitate which forms after mixing is normal and indicates solution is saturated. Allow it to remain as
it is a reservoir of additional chromate. The solution loses its effectiveness as it turns green with continued
use.
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