Tour My Lab

Nice work. Here's a few comments. All are meant to be constructive:

1. In your face velocity calculation you lost the 60s/min somehow. FV = [(650 ft^3/min)/(60 s/min)]/6 ft^2 = 1.80 ft/s, which is good.

2. All that wood is a fire hazard. Perhaps it could be replaced, or faced, with gypsum wall board. Just an idea for your consideration.

3. 8" ducting - good

4. In line fan - possible fire hazard from sparking.

5. I like your exhaust stack, but what do the neighbors think about it?

My fume hood!

Total cost: $27.95
Everything else: junk sitting in the garage.
Construction time: 6 hrs
Face-velocity: Guess; 80 fpm at high sash. Good enough to keep ALOT of xylene vapors below 1ppm out here.

Man there was a guy who did research on pyruvian torch and other psychoactive cacti and he had the most magnificent laboratory;

He had a very large work bench and stock room, the workbench was ventilated by a large windows that were vented straigh outside, additionally circulated by a fumehood nearby. Natural light and when working with non-volatile solvents or non-toxics, could simply open up the windows. The whole room was set about 6 feet underground, so that the windows were just barely aboveground. Kept the room at a reasonable temperature.

In view from the vent windows was a greenhouse in which the researcher grew the cacti and other plants to do extractions on. Oh god it was wonderful, the picture.

A man sitting at a bench, sun lit, windows open, green everywhere outside the windows, and psychoactive plants abound - that is my dream

Question: Has anyone ever rented lab space? How much did you pay for it. There is a place literally kitty korner from my house that is wanting to rent lab space. I would like to but am not familiar with prices. Plus I have this nervous twitch that everyone will believe I'm making meth. While I'm not making meth - I do have illegal items.

[Edited on 24-1-2012 by GreenD]

Thanks for the correction.. I did lose the units. 80-100 fpm.

I appreciate the constructive criticism. My purpose in making my lab public is just for this purpose. The following remarks are not defensive; rather, they are clarifications.

The fan is centrifugal; therefore, the wiring and the motor are hermetically sealed.

We'll see what the neighbors think... I'm sure they are oblivious as long as I am not ostentatious. I'm working relatively microscale. Any vapor should be adequately dissipated by the time it reaches their houses.

Wood IS a fire hazard.
Precautions: 2 layers of thick epoxy on entire fume hood.
Fire extinguisher on hand.
All chemicals not currently being used are stored in a secluded place, away from my shed.

Anything I am doing is <500 mL, often <250 mL. If an ignition did occur, I'm confident it would be readily contained. The key to any of this is to understand the cues: understanding when a reaction has runaway and taking the steps to neutralize it. Assuming an ignition did occur, it would not turn the hood into flames immediately! Combustion takes time. Plus it would have to dissolve the epoxy.

Aircow,

The pot is just a bayou aluminum stockpot. I got it for free, but I don't really have a use for it. Al reacts with acids; therefore, I can't use it for brewing [the only thing I would potentially use it for].

Yeah.. until I find a consistent, reliable supplier I am purifying and synth my own chemicals

Rapture - TBH, the most reliable supplies I have found are either domestic products and eBay!

I am nearly finished moving my lab to a nice location. a 100m long, 8m wide. made of brick with vaulted celing.
I still have to unpack almost all of my chemicals and glass, but here is a little preview, if i find a cupboard I will put my chemicals in there, but otherwise i'll keep them on that ledge. on the other side is a cupboard of glassware.

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro

100m long

this is a friend of mine helping me move some of my lab equipment under cover of darkness.
unfortunately there was sulfuric and nitric acid among them (as you all know, very heavy) and the cart broke down so we got a lift in a truck full of chips
he gave us 5 bags, yum yum.

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro

...under cover of darkness.

Sweet.

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro

...the cart broke down so we got a lift in a truck full of chips he gave us 5 bags, yum yum.

Great community support!

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro

I am nearly finished moving my lab to a nice location. a 100m long, 8m wide. made of brick with vaulted celing.

Quote: Originally posted by Eliteforum

Do you have legal usage of this underground area?

legal? the owner permitted me to use it. but nothing else.

is a Bunsen burner good enough?

Oh, Magpie:I went at night because we took the cart on the road lol, down main street. at night there re less cars


[Edited on 24-9-2012 by Pyro]

here are a few more pics.
1) my workspace and hotplate
2) on the table are alcohols and solvents, acids on the right
3) weighing table. under the dust cover is the mettler H80 that woelen very generously sold me.
4)the top 4 bottles are nitric, sulfuric and hydrochloric acid and ethanol refills. to the left is a cupboard with glasware
5)the same as #3 but without the dust cover. i carefully scraped off the glue-like stuff on the front and cleaned the glass.




[Edited on 24-9-2012 by Pyro]

its place for wine drinking not for chemistry

Why? because t is a cellar?
it's full of somebody's junk, not wine lol.
PS:who says chemistry and wine can't go together?

[Edited on 25-9-2012 by Pyro]

safety rules

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro

PS:who says chemistry and wine can't go together?

Here here! I was going to throw away about 25 L of a really bad batch but then I thought 'distillation!'

Nice place to set up; evokes images of the labs of old. Are you on good terms with the owner then? I can't imagine anyone I didn't know very, very well allowing me to set up a lab in their property!

My lab

After seeing everyone else's pics and viewing magpies awesome hood I thought I'd post a few of my lab in progress.

I started building this lab in May of this year, to be added soon are shelves opposite of the bench and a flammables cabinet and a fume hood.

The distill rig is starting a standard nitric acid run, and the yellow filtering flask is a uranium extraction in progress. Appropriately the bench is from ORNL's X-10 division (wiki it), part of our nuclear/national security complex.

One nice thing about having a national lab next door is a LOT of chemical and lab suppliers, although not many are great about selling to the public.

ATM I only have a vacuum aspirator on the other end of the garage and a line ran on the ceiling dropping down above the bench, and the last pic is of a desk for paperwork/computer research about 10' from the lab bench.
There is also a de-humidifier behind the bench that is handy for keeping lab humidity down and accelerating crystallizations.

The cokes are old collectables back when my FiL thought they would be worth money. As old as they are they are probably as dangerous as anything else in the pics to consume I never eat or drink in my lab, safety first in all.

Quote: Originally posted by zenosx

The cokes are old collectables back when my FiL thought they would be worth money. As old as they are they are probably as dangerous as anything else in the pics to consume I never eat or drink in my lab, safety first in all.

Cook

Nice lab hex, I wish my lab could stay that clean.

Unfortunately, my basement is a "working" basement, with my car being restored back behind my chemical shelf, a wood-stove that is used, (keeps my fan working in BOTH seasons), and with the wood comes tons of Dust and Dirt (and the occasional large wolf spider, one which I swear tried to attack me, hiding in my ground glassware drawer), plus the woman's car and the mower and other garage implements. More of a garage / basement, than a basement.

The only good part of this type of arrangement is when accidents happen (like the overproduction of chlorine gas), it's less of an issue than if it was a finished basement

Labconco Fumehood

Latest addition to my "garage lab". It has a built-in vent fan.

I just had to cut a hole in my roof to install 6 inch green sewer PVC straight up through the hole.

Bought it off Ebay for $250 and $280 to ship.

Used black poly floor runner from Lowes over the table to form a tight seal between the table top and bottom of the fumehood.

I don't know how I got along without it - did all my reacts outside. Not fun when it was raining.

I have not seen the back yard of my house since I installed this essential piece of lab equipment.

kadriver

this is one of my glassware shelves, at the bottom are empty bottles, at the top random stuff and in the middle are flasks and boxes of ampules that are older than I am.



the top of this same glassware shelf, more random things like pipetted, keck clips, clamps, etc.



here is a view of the entire place I use. on the left is a gassware shelf, in the middle my workspace, under the table my gas bottle and on the right my weighing/chemical table. lucky I have the dust cover, otherwise all that I2 would be on my scales



this is where I keep more glassware, beakers, flanks, condensers, vol. pipettes, etc.



My Hoffman device



some of my chems


A side view of my lab.

hope you enjoyed these pictures

yo dawg

Quote: Originally posted by stoichiometric_steve

[picture]

www.instantrimshot.com

The pun.... it huuuurts

Steve, do you have any detailed images of that stillhead? Love the design...

Quote: Originally posted by Lambda-Eyde

Steve, do you have any detailed images of that stillhead? Love the design...

There you go.

Got another 3 of those lovely pieces. I was lucky enough to pick them up at ridiculous prices, a new one of that type is usually 500 EUR and up.

i just felt artistic.

Quote: Originally posted by stoichiometric_steve

i just felt artistic.

i took it like this and applied awesome Photoshop skills

I never posted a pic of my whole lab!

Quote: Originally posted by mr.crow

Wow!!! First person to make a Breaking Bad joke gets punched in the face

Quote: Originally posted by mr.crow

First person to make a Breaking Bad joke gets punched in the face

Quote: Originally posted by jock88

So which lab are all the (Braking Bad (whatever the fuck that is)) jokes referring too? Pyro's lab or a deleted picture?

Quote: Originally posted by Waffles SS

Sorry but i deleted my posts about my lab because i think every body here take wrong concept about me.(they think i should be gang or cook)

Quote: Originally posted by mr.crow

No Waffles, we are all very interested! My comment was referring to what any average person would say, you are in good company here

Very much so! More pictures would actually be awesome, like seeing the chemical end products or what your analysis lab looks like etc

Ok.I put these images again.
Our main product is Glycine now(we are registered factory and we have permission for make chemicals)


Retired 1000lit glass reactor


Crystallizer


20lit Titanium/Tantalum reactor


Second floor(steam extractor+500lit glass reactor with receiver +1000 lit SS316 reactor + spray dryer)


Distil system with condenser


all 3 floor

Soon images from lab and analysis devices(GC-Ms,HPLC,..)
and chemical inventory(more than 5000 chemicals)

[Edited on 21-12-2012 by Waffles SS]

Bump to an old thread. I just tidied up my lab and decided to share a picture.

Very nice, kavu! I'm jealous of the rotavap and your nice Flexaframe...what material is it made of? (My SS bars have corroded like nobody's business.... )

How is ventilation in your lab?

[Edited on 6-1-2013 by Hexavalent]

Nice

Do you have plans/drawings for the lab frame? Only my two vertical rods are simply forced into a piece of wood with some weights on top, which isn't the most stable of structures

Additionally, what's your hotplate sitting on? A heatproof mat of some kind?

Thanks.

[Edited on 6-1-2013 by Hexavalent]

Quote: Originally posted by Hexavalent

Nice Additionally, what's your hotplate sitting on? A heatproof mat of some kind? [Edited on 6-1-2013 by Hexavalent]

It looks like tile if I am not mistaken! Great idea

Lots of Pictures...

This is my fumehood with a metal scaffold at the back.

This is a double manifold schlenk line

My inorganic chemical storage shelf

My rotary vane vacuum pump and my teflon lined diaphram vacuum pump

my hotplate and some random lab items



solvent still

various solvents stored over molecular seives

my nitrogen tank and regulator(the blue tank behind is argon)

my liquid nitrogen tank and a walmart thermos for use as a gas trap for my schlenk line

Waste solvent bin and behind it is an acetone bin used mainly for cleaning glassware

a picture of my work bench

another general storage area, mainly for OTC stuff

some addition funnels

some condensers and a small chromatography column

erylenmeyers and filter flasks

my lab fridge

contents of my lab fridge, just a few volatile chems and some that dont keep well

my glassware drying rack

my improvised labratory oven consistion of a hotplate and a colemans camping stove

Some pear shaped schlenk flasks

My organic chemical storage cupboard

The contents of my organic chemical storage cupboard

My acid storage bin

My solvents/flammables metal storage container

A picture of most of my lab from a different view

Just got my lab on the way to being the way I want it Ill finish it next fall after I have built my garage to store my junk in. Now I can start to try and learn Chemistry. And as you already know it ain't gonna be easy for me.

[img]C:\Users\Steve\Pictures\Lab\Lab constructing\Upload\1.jpg[/img]
[img]C:\Users\Steve\Pictures\Lab\Lab constructing\Upload\2.jpg[/img]

[img]C:\Users\Steve\Pictures\Lab\Lab constructing\Upload\3.jpg[/img]

[img]C:\Users\Steve\Pictures\Lab\Lab constructing\Upload\4.jpg[/img]

[img]C:\Users\Steve\Pictures\Lab\Lab constructing\Upload\5.jpg[/img]

[img]C:\Users\Steve\Pictures\Lab\Lab constructing\Upload\6.jpg[/img]

It's not much but here is my fume hood just after it was finished
The hole in the back can be connected to a very powerful fan to deal with any dense vapors that the main fan can't pull away.

Yea Steve. I can see why it would be hard for you. How do you get anything done in that dump.

I'm impressed both by the workmanship and the creativity exhibited by my colleagues in this thread.

Here is Rhosgobel, home of Radagast. Although it's far more ramshackle than my university workspace, it'll always be my home.

Quote: Originally posted by radagast

I'm impressed both by the workmanship and the creativity exhibited by my colleagues in this thread. Here is Rhosgobel, home of Radagast. Although it's far more ramshackle than my university workspace, it'll always be my home.

Quote: Originally posted by Dr.Bob

Quote: Originally posted by radagast   I'm impressed both by the workmanship and the creativity exhibited by my colleagues in this thread. Here is Rhosgobel, home of Radagast. Although it's far more ramshackle than my university workspace, it'll always be my home. I love the look of it. Is that is a Chromatotron in the background on the bench? That brings back old memories. They are nice for certain scales and purifications. I always liked to push the material through a plug of silica first to remove most of the baseline and polar carp, then the plates would last a long time if cared for well. I might even have some old parts for them somewhere.

First of all, it's important that every mad science laboratory has a gargoyle door knocker.



And here we are, my lab! Pardon the mess; I'm still moving in. It used to be located in a warehouse where I work and live, but we had to move it. It stayed briefly in a basement with a flooding problem, then finally is getting set up in my friend's shed.



When I get settled down, I plan on moving the air conditioner out and installing a small fume hood in the area in front of the window.

We still need to move a couple things out of the basement, like some cool metal lockers that I have. That's why there are still random piles of crap everywhere.




I keep equipment, especially big stuff like stands, in this grey cabinet.



In the cabinet under the lab bench, I store bulk and hazardous chemicals, and a bit more equipment.




Extra chemical storage in convenient shelves over the lab bench. They'd be more convenient were I taller...



No lab would be complete without a space for literature and computer-based research. Here's where I keep my references. Also visible are the lab fridge, the lab microwave, and several decades' worth of American Funeral Director magazine.



I have only one complaint about this space, though it's a fairly major one: No running water! My dirty dishes are backing up!

Cool thanks for sharing. My basement lab doesn't have any running water either.. my glassware gets piled in the same fashion

Decided to finally clean up my lab today, so here we go:

View from the door:


Glassware and chemicals (I don't have that much yet):


Electronics workspace:


The back of the lab, with central heating (Centrale Verwarming):


View from the outside (And the little window in the roof):

Nice workspacce you got there, mate. Living the dream.

The second picture (gas cylinder) that you posted reminds me that i have been meaning to ask about diy hydrogen generators, and how they work, etc.
I have seen videos on youtube of guys making their own diy generators to work with their cars, in some way.
I was wondering that if that works, could it work to generate gas to work with chemical reaktions, etc?

Quote: Originally posted by Praxichys

Hi everyone. Yep, it's Dougthemapper, and I'm back with a fresh new, err... everything! I have a new username and YouTube channel so I can cut ties with some of my older and less interesting videos and posts, to reperesnt a new era of exciting chemistry demonstrations. I built a new lab in the basement of the house I just bought. This is also a shamless plug for my youtube channel. Check out the new digs: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyUW5J-Kt5c I can't wait to start filming stuff. Let me know if there's something you want to see first and I will see if I can add it to the video list.

Nervous boys in the safe Room !
(Sulfuryl Chloride,Phosphorus trichloride,Phosphoryl Chloride)

I'm in the process of building my lab, it should be done this week!

Since my previous post, a lot has happened.
I recently moved to the city Bergen, and I now live on former millitary terrain.
This has a very nice addition: My own dedicated lab building.
I'm still moving everything in and cleaning the building, but here's some pictures:

<table border="0"><tr><th>The Building:</th><th>The Entrance: </th><th>Haven't cleaned this up yet ;)</th></tr><tr><td> </td><td> </td><td> </td></tr><tr><th>Other part of the building:</th><th>Workbench with my glassware:</th><th>Soon-to-be chemical storage:</th></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><th>Window to the other room:</th><th>Windows:</th><th>Close-up of glassware:</th></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr></table>

<!-- bfesser_edit_tag -->[<a href="u2u.php?action=send&username=bfesser">bfesser</a>: corrected template-breaking HTML]

[Edited on 24.10.13 by bfesser]

I redecorated my lab.
A friend of mine is going to merge his lab with mine as he doesn't have a space anymore.
I did my Killgore impression: I want this junkline brought back 4m! I love the smell of dust in the morning
and so created lot more space for tables.


and we built a fume hose, a high power fan pointing out the window, everything taped shut and a fireproofed sheet nailed in place over it.
It sucked up almost all the smoke from about 4 tablespoons of KNO3/sugar mix at quite a distance.

when not in use the hose is on a hook, otherwise its attached to a stand

OH SHIT, IT'S QUARTER PAST SIX!

My friend has moved in! now we have a nice big and well equipped lab. so here goes:

We took two cabinets from upstairs and loaded them up with stuff

top shelf is general reagents, next one down in the yellow cabinets are poisons (HgCl2, HgNO3, strychnine,...) and very flammable materials (WP, RP, Mg, Al powder, Na,...) and next to them are things that don't really fit into the above categories.
one shelf down from that are oxidizers on the right and hydroxides on the left (just spotted my flaw, should be just bases) and on the bottom shelf are alcohols (left) and acids (right)

All ground glass distillation apparattus


A picture showing the location of the cabinets, one in the entrance for chems, one to the left of the workbench for glass

Th more commonly used glassware such as beakers, flasks, measuring cilinders and sep. funnels.
there is still lots to add to this, My bath is full to the brim with glassware. He got lots from a friend who had had a fire so its all sooty.


For some reason he had lots of NiCl2, but it was moist and clumped so we dried it and ground it up. this isn't even half

All the cupboards are locked when I leave to stop theft and environmental people from seeing what I have

[Edited on 2-11-2013 by Pyro]

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro

ZeroHour. do you mean the blue capped reagent bottles in the cabinet? I bought them for a few bucks (used) from an art restorer. The ones with white caps are the bottles that reagents come in from: Hinmeijer.nl http://www.hinmeijer.nl/product/165603/Bruine_glazen_fles.as... they sell almost all chemicals and glassware. Shipping to the Netherlands is also very reasonable

Yeah, I ment the capped ones. Sorry for being unclear
I don't see any white capped bottles in your cabinet? Do you mean the plastic powder bottles?
Thanks for the link! I must've overlooked these, they sure seem neat!

[Edited on 5-11-2013 by ZeroHour]

[Edited on 5-11-2013 by ZeroHour]

LOL bfesser.
the NiCl2 was a moist solid lump, so we broke it up and were grinding it when we thought it would make a cool picture.
how about the good stuff? How to equip a lab, lesson #1: steal cabinets

ZeroHour, check the previous post I did with a pic of my fume hose, on the shelf there are solvents in white capped bottles

[Edited on 5-11-2013 by Pyro]

Got some new shelves set up, otherwise the lab is the same bench, but here are the new shelving & bench layout.

Note that the orange juice was picked up from the other side from days ago, I do not drink in my lab



An awesome side note is that my chemistry instructor likes my lab so much that he lets me turn in some of my experiments for extra credit