Dear Frank and everyone,
Thanks for useful tips. Snow in liquid nitrogen has been annoying us on a regular basis in fact. During some synchrotron sessions, a large percentage of crystals were covered with snow. We could never fully figure out how to get rid of it, although filtering LN2 before filling the vessel for freezing seemed to help a bit... Would installing a dehumidifier in a standard 20C crystallization room (where we mount most of our crystals) be a good idea? Any experiences there? I guess the downside would be that small crystallization drops would be drying more quickly... Best wishes, Sergei Prof. Sergei V. Strelkov Laboratory for Biocrystallography Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, KU Leuven O&N2, Campus Gasthuisberg, Herestraat 49 bus 822, 3000 Leuven, Belgium Phone: +32 16 33 08 45, mobile: +32 486 29 41 32 Lab pages: http://pharm.kuleuven.be/Biocrystallography<http://pharm.kuleuven.be/anafar> ________________________________ From: CCP4 bulletin board <CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK> on behalf of Frank Von Delft <frank.vonde...@sgc.ox.ac.uk> Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2019 7:03 To: CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] design specs/tolerances for crystallization rooms? My colleague Opher Gileadi gave us an excellent tip when we were designing our 4C harvesting room, over a decade ago: set it to 7C. The crystals are unlikely to mind, but it's SO much more comfortable to be in for hours. I seem to remember he mentioned something like a comfort inflection point as you approach 4C. Install low-flow fans. Fridge people seem to default to installing hurricane machines, you have to tell them that a very very small flow is enough. Get strong light - probably even those daylight things (we don't have them). Being cold is miserable enough already, there's no need to compound it with weak light. Vibration - that dwindles to insignificance if the air flow goes down. Humidity - we installed (at considerable expense) a low humidity air supply - really hard to know just how much it helps, but a few years ago when I had it turned it off to help save energy, very quickly I heard complaints about snow in the liquid nitrogen becoming a major hassle. So based on that set of anecdotes, I conclude it probably is worth having dry air. It's much cheaper though if they can design it into the building's infrastructure, if it's a new building; retrofitting turned out to be super expensive (in our case). As dry as possible. Look at and understand the psychrometric chart (google it): if you're in even vaguely warm or temperate regions (or seasons), cooling the intake air to 4C brings it to below dew point, and then condensation and snow are guaranteed. Size - make it as big as you can get away with, with lots of bench and shelf space. Your students will already be miserably cold, no need for them to be cramped too. Good luck! Frank On 24/09/2019 23:40, Scott, Emily wrote: Anyone out there specifically design rooms for (protein) crystallization at ~22 deg and 4 deg C? If you have successes or failures and can share any design specs with regard to vibration, temperature, and humidity tolerances, it would be much appreciated to pass on to the architects for our new laboratory. Sincerely, Emily Scott -- Emily Scott, Ph.D. Professor, Medicinal Chemistry/Pharmacology/Biophysics Faculty Director, BioNMR Core Lab University of Michigan 428 Church Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1065 Phone: 734-764-3530 https://pharmacy.umich.edu/people/scottee Lab webpage: http://scottlab.info ********************************************************** Electronic Mail is not secure, may not be read every day, and should not be used for urgent or sensitive issues ________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1 ________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1 ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1
