Construction Material How To Decide on Pressure Vessel (Autoclave) Material? Choice of material is determined by water quality or load type. Distilled or deionized (DI) water feed will require the chamber (jacket and chamber) to be fabricated from stainless steel, including the plumbing and components. Material Choices Stainless Steel Chamber, Carbon Steel Jacket Standard offering from Consolidated unless otherwise specified. Nickel Clad Chamber, Carbon Steel Jacket Nickel Clad is more resistant to rusting; it doesn’t pit as much as stainless, and is more resistant to chlorides. Ideal for labs (e.g. marine biology labs) working with Sea Water This material should not be used if working with bloodwork. Stainless Chamber, Stainless Jacket If the water quality is above 1 MΩ/cm stainless steel is required. This option is critical for lab work with tissue culture or labs feeding distilled or deionized (DI) water to the sterilizer. Stainless piping and a stainless generator are necessary as well. In turn, if a stainless steel generator is chosen, water greater than 1 MΩ/cm must be used. ← Help Me Choose
7.12.23 Cordyceps Sterilization: How to Kill “The Last of Us” Parasite → In HBO’s recent adaptation of “The Last of Us,” a popular action-adventure video game, life as we know it is upended by a parasitic fungus that transforms its human hosts into zombies. The culprit? Cordyceps, a real-life genus of fungus which is best known for infecting insects (most famously ants) in much the same manner […]
6.30.23 Top 13 Sterile Processing Mistakes in Hospitals → When it comes to ensuring patient safety in hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), the Sterile Processing Department (SPD) is among the last lines of defense. It’s this department’s sole responsibility to make sure that reusable instruments and devices are properly decontaminated, sterilized, and ultimately safe to use in future procedures — protecting patients from […]
6.22.23 Sterilization vs. High-Level and Low-Level Disinfection [a 3-Point Comparison] → In a 1939 paper, microbiologist Earle H. Spaulding introduced a system for determining which medical devices and instruments needed disinfection and which ones required sterilization. In it, he proposed that critical instruments would need to be subjected to more stringent disinfection protocols than non-critical patient care items. Today, this framework is fittingly known as Spaulding […]