[Nhcoll-l] [EXTERN] Fluid specimen room safety
Bentley, Andrew Charles
abentley at ku.edu
Mon Jul 8 14:24:49 EDT 2024
Just adding to this, it is important to work with your fire marshal or equivalent (along with the architects and users of the facillity) as they will be inspecting the facility, will be able to let you know how they interpret the regulations, and they will be expected to uphold the regulations as such. They will have a good sense of what is allowed, and what you can “get away with”.
Andy
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Andy Bentley
Ichthyology Collection Manager
University of Kansas
Biodiversity Institute
Dyche Hall
1345 Jayhawk Boulevard<x-apple-data-detectors://9/>
Lawrence, KS, 66045-7561<x-apple-data-detectors://9/>
USA<x-apple-data-detectors://9/>
Tel: (785) 864-3863<tel:%28785%29%20864-3863>
Fax: (785) 864-5335<tel:%28785%29%20864-5335>
Email: abentley at ku.edu<mailto:abentley at ku.edu>
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3093-1258
http://ichthyology.biodiversity.ku.edu<http://ichthyology.biodiversity.ku.edu/>
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From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> on behalf of John E Simmons <simmons.johne at gmail.com>
Date: Monday, July 8, 2024 at 12:59 PM
To: Stodola, Alison Price <alprice at illinois.edu>
Cc: NHCOLL-new <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] [EXTERN] Fluid specimen room safety
Just a quick follow-up to Alison's excellent message--I, too, was involved with the construction of a fluid collection facility many years ago at the University of Kansas. One of the most important things we learned from that process is most fire detection, suppression, and safety regulations do not address the storage of scientific specimens, but are focussed on either the storage of beverage alcohol (rarely more than 40% ETOH) and bulk storage of full-strength alcohol (95.6% in metal barrels). To avoid having your collection facility forced to comply with the most strict regulations, it is very important to work with the regulatory authorities to help them understand what is in your collection, and how it is used so that they can adapt the regulations accordingly. When building the facility at Kansas, we were fortunate to have an architect who became very interested in the collection and took the time to come observe the lab and ask lots of questions, and as a result, the facility had to meet less strenuous regulations than were first proposed.
In short, it is necessary to find a good compromise between your main concerns (a good storage environment for the collection) and the regulator's main concerns (human and building safety).
--John
John E. Simmons
Writer and Museum Consultant
Museologica
and
Investigador Asociado, Departamento de Ornitologia
Museo de Historia Natural, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima
On Mon, Jul 8, 2024 at 1:46 PM Stodola, Alison Price <alprice at illinois.edu<mailto:alprice at illinois.edu>> wrote:
Hi Joosep and the nhcoll community,
Our institute constructed a few fluid storage rooms to house mollusk specimens stored in glass jars and vials with 70% to 95% ethanol. These spaces were retrofitted within a standard office building and required significant reconstruction to pass inspection. In your case, the local fire authority will ultimately determine whether a space meets proper safety requirements. Our fire marshal approved the space specs after many (!) revisions. For this build, we have:
1.
1. Each room has metal fire doors, sheetrock walls, sheetrock ceilings, and a flat, finished concrete floor (with no drains). Lights and outlets are spark-free.
1. The HVAC system was reconstructed to provide a separate exhaust for these spaces, since the vapors themselves can burn if there is a fire; this prevents the ignited vapors from circulating within the rest of the building in the rare event of a fire.
1. We are only allowed to store a maximum of 900 liters in each room and we have four such rooms for our entire mollusk collection. This liter maximum is to limit total burn time (I think it's estimated at staying contained for 2 hours if the entire room combusted and the doors were kept closed).
1. The fire suppression spray heads were aligned with fixed metal shelving from Bradford Systems.
1. We have spill kits in each room to sop up spilled ethanol and broken glass. We use spill control absorbent mats and plastic bins to place broken glass in.
1. The majority of our jars are stored in rigid plastic bins that are impermeable to ethanol. These bins would contain a spill or broken glass if one or more jars break within that tray. We are not in an area with high earthquake risk, so they did not require earthquake bars.
1. We have reduced the number of larger glass containers (anything over 1 gallon), and all larger lots are stored in blue plastic barrels; these will eventually be moved to a stainless-steel gasket tank this fall. The stainless-steel tank will be housed in a different space altogether to reduce our fluid volumes in the retrofitted fluid storage rooms.
Hope this helps!
Alison
--------------------------------------------------
Alison Stodola (she, her), Aquatic Biologist
Acting Curator of Malacology | Illinois Natural History Survey
Prairie Research Institute | University of Illinois
1816 S. Oak Street | Champaign, IL 61820
alprice at illinois.edu<mailto:alprice at illinois.edu> | 217-300-0969 (office)
INHS Mollusk Collection<https://mollusk.inhs.illinois.edu/>
________________________________
From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu>> on behalf of Simon Moore <couteaufin at btinternet.com<mailto:couteaufin at btinternet.com>>
Sent: Friday, July 5, 2024 4:11 AM
To: Dirk Neumann fp. <d.neumann at leibniz-lib.de<mailto:d.neumann at leibniz-lib.de>>
Cc: NHCOLL-new <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] [EXTERN] Fluid specimen room safety
I would second Dirk’s remarks about floor ridges. Having experiences them first hand with a trolley full of quite tall jars filled with alcohol and having to negotiate a floor ridge (on my own - reduced staffing levels!) so that the jars didn’t knock against each other! This was back in the 1980s. It also takes a large spillage combined with raised external temperature during a hot summer, to produce anything like a realistic fire hazard due to the rather lower flash point of alcohol versus other volatiles. However, Health & Safety parameters are often slightly exaggerated for obvious reasons.
With all good wishes, Simon
Simon Moore MIScT, RSci, FLS, ACR
Conservator of Natural Sciences and Cutlery Historian.
https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.natural-history-conservation.com__;!!DZ3fjg!5TyxrmuKkJ4FRPuzGeVFOGE42azphmkUi5UrHIYouncFhr2LCGsAqz8or-VdJVeEb3sZNd-_OfPTCKQGwSpZd8T1$
> On 5 Jul 2024, at 07:18, Dirk Neumann <d.neumann at leibniz-lib.de<mailto:d.neumann at leibniz-lib.de>> wrote:
>
> Dear Joosep,
>
> this depends on your local fire safety regulations; in principle, ethanol itself does not burn, but the highly flammable ethanol fumes. Depending on your HVAC system, a sufficiently high air exchange rates in your alcohol storage significantly reduces potential fire risks. Another relevant factor is reducing potential ignition sources, as ethanol usually does not self-ingnite. It needs a spark.
>
> In case of breakage, it is required in some countries that there are grooves or barriers, e.g. at doors to prevent that in case of a larger spillage ethanol can escape from the storage room. However, these grooves or small barriers usually affect much more, e.g. when you have to wheel carts over these barriers.
>
> Storage rooms should be equipped with small emergency kits that help to remove spillages; there are several chemical spill kits with binders etc. on the market.
>
> To create a combustible atmosphere it usually requires a "large spillage", e.g. a major earthquake or collapse of storage shelves that knocks off hundreds of jars at once.
>
> Hope this helps
> Dirk
>
>
>
>
> Am 04.07.2024 um 10:43 schrieb Joosep Sarapuu:
>>
>>
>> Dear all,
>> How have you solved the safety of the rooms for fluid specimen? If the cans break, are there any grooves where the liquids run or how do you dispose of such things? What quantities have you considered in case something like that happens?
>> Sincerely,
>> Joosep Sarapuu
>> Estonian Museum of Natural History
>>
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>
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