One lab freezer can use as much power as a household
An ultra-cold laboratory freezer held at minus 80 degrees Celsius can consume about 25 kilowatt-hours a day, roughly what a family home uses. Nudging it to minus 70 cuts energy use by around 40 percent while keeping most samples safe, one of many ways labs are trimming a heavy footprint.
A laboratory is any facility offering controlled conditions for research, experiments or measurement. Labs sit in schools, universities, companies, government and military sites, and even aboard ships and spacecraft. What fills them depends on the specialists: a physics lab might hold a vacuum chamber or particle accelerator, a metallurgy lab furnaces and strength-testing rigs. Classic kit ranges from Bunsen burners and microscopes to centrifuges, autoclaves and spectrophotometers. The name has spread to crime labs, medical labs and community spaces such as Fab Labs and hackerspaces where people prototype together.
The earliest English uses of the word involved alchemy and medicine-making. By one account the earliest known lab was a home workshop of Pythagoras of Samos, where he experimented with sound and vibrating strings. Albert Edelfelt's 1885 portrait shows Louis Pasteur studying a bottle with no protective gear at all. Team research took hold in the nineteenth century, and the Big Science of the Second World War swelled labs and their machines. Sociologists note that the lab itself is an organisational model, born from the observation that collaborating researchers generally produce better work than isolated ones.
Hazards are real: poisons, infectious agents, flammable, explosive or radioactive substances, lasers, strong magnets and high voltage. In the United States, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has a dedicated standard for chemical exposure in labs, requiring a chemical hygiene plan, and regular audits cover waste, ventilation, radiation and emergency readiness.
Energy is a growing concern. Research labs with heavy equipment can use three to five times more energy per square metre than offices, and fume hoods are major culprits because they pull out large volumes of heated or cooled air. Swapping water-cooled condensers for air-cooled ones saves water, timers on glassware ovens save power, and sorting genuinely contaminated waste from ordinary rubbish avoids costly specialised disposal.
Source: Laboratory
