My colleague Opher Gileadi gave us an excellent tip when we were designing our 4C harvesting room, over a decade ago: set it to 7C. The crystals are unlikely to mind, but it's SO much more comfortable to be in for hours.

I seem to remember he mentioned something like a comfort inflection point as you approach 4C.

Install low-flow fans. Fridge people seem to default to installing hurricane machines, you have to tell them that a very very small flow is enough.

Get strong light - probably even those daylight things (we don't have them). Being cold is miserable enough already, there's no need to compound it with weak light.

Vibration - that dwindles to insignificance if the air flow goes down.

Humidity - we installed (at considerable expense) a low humidity air supply - really hard to know just how much it helps, but a few years ago when I had it turned it off to help save energy, very quickly I heard complaints about snow in the liquid nitrogen becoming a major hassle. So based on that set of anecdotes, I conclude it probably is worth having dry air.

It's much cheaper though if they can design it into the building's infrastructure, if it's a new building; retrofitting turned out to be super expensive (in our case).

As dry as possible. Look at and understand the psychrometric chart (google it): if you're in even vaguely warm or temperate regions (or seasons), cooling the intake air to 4C brings it to below dew point, and then condensation and snow are guaranteed.

Size - make it as big as you can get away with, with lots of bench and shelf space. Your students will already be miserably cold, no need for them to be cramped too.

Good luck!
Frank

On 24/09/2019 23:40, Scott, Emily wrote:

[log in to unmask]">

Anyone out there specifically design rooms for (protein) crystallization at ~22 deg and 4 deg C? If you have successes or failures and can share any design specs with regard to vibration, temperature, and humidity tolerances, it would be much appreciated to pass on to the architects for our new laboratory.

Sincerely,

Emily Scott

--

Emily Scott, Ph.D.

Professor, Medicinal Chemistry/Pharmacology/Biophysics

Faculty Director, BioNMR Core Lab

University of Michigan

428 Church Street

Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1065

Phone: 734-764-3530

https://pharmacy.umich.edu/people/scottee

Lab webpage: http://scottlab.info

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