York University will shortly be taking delivery of a number of priorclaves for use in the biology department’s teaching laboratories and associated central wash-up and sterilising facilities, the third contract to be awarded to Priorclave by the university in the past 12 months. Although the laboratory equipment supplies market is extremely competitive, the operations manager at York University specified the Priorclave brand of autoclaves because of their inherent and proven energy efficiency, enabling the department to reduce significantly its day-to-day operational costs. This was a key factor in changing to priorclaves since all utility supplies along with media disposal costs are levied direct to the university.
The department of biology is internationally renowned for the strength and quality of its research, teaching and state-of-the-art facilities, and is consistently ranked as one of the top biology departments in the country. The spacious modern teaching laboratories provide an outstanding research environment for studying cancer, immunology and tissue engineering, to novel agricultural products, environmental studies and bio-archaeology.
For the ultra-modern teaching laboratories Priorclave is supplying a 350l autoclave featuring a ‘square’ chamber, providing sufficient capacity to sterilise everything from small and medium-sized containers to large canisters and other plastic items. Despite its large chamber the 350 autoclave has a small footprint ensuring that York University can maximise the teaching area. Effortless access to the front-loading chamber is gained by the two hand-wheel door closure system.
It is the combination of standard functions such as delayed start and media warming for ready to pour media at the start of the day plus automatic timed freesteaming for improving air removal and sterilising performance that contributes to the speed at which the priorclaves can move from an off status into a full on-start for steam sterilisation. It proved a major factor in winning the contract for the biology department.
As part of this contact Priorclave is to supply a high-capacity steam steriliser, a 700l autoclave for the central wash-up and sterlising facility to ensure complete sterilisation of all medium and other waste by-products generated by more than 30 research groups located in the department of biology. This large, front-loading rectangular chambered autoclave also has an easy-open/close door locking system activated by three hand-wheels.
The addition of Priorclave autoclaves at York University ensures that the biology department, which is recognised as one of the leading biological science departments in the UK, maintains the highest of standards in sterilisation in the laboratory to prevent cross contaminations, as well as in the central wash-up facility for the safe disposal of deactivated waste material from research experiments in-line with legal requirements.
