The Deuteration Facility has a new lab. After the fire in 2021, the lab rebuild project is completed, which is certainly something to celebrate!
Contents:
D-Lab Grand Opening
After a great deal of work by the D-Lab team, especially the managers June and previous Sarah Youngs, the D-Lab has reopened its doors, better than ever!
Grand Opening Event
A Grand Reopening Event was held on Wednesday 14th of February. Kicked off with a presentation and cake (always a winning combination), including a custom-made reopening cake.
Sarah slicing into the cake to celebrate the reopening of the lab.
Left: June gives a presentation on the rebuilding and evolution of the D-Lab. Right: Sarah uses a resonably sized pair of scissors to mark the rebuild D-Lab 'open'!
June gave a presentation describing the challenges the rebuild had faced and describing the new lab space and capabilities.
The event then moved on to the lab, with Sarah cutting the ribbon with an entirely-reasonably-sized pair of scissors, followed by an open access session for ISIS staff to tour the newly completed lab, check out its capabilities and discuss what they want from the lab with the D-Lab staff.
Left: Roger and Zoe join in on the discussions in the D-Lab; Right, June shows off her new storage shelves.
Left: There were also displays with the lab build process available in the lab; Righ: Showing off the new kit!
For more details about the D-Lab Grand Opening event, please check out the article here:
ISIS New Deuteration Laboratory now open!
Comparison of old D-Lab to new D-Lab
Old D-Lab Layout (top) and new D-Lab layout (bottom).
The Deuteration Facility was not simply rebuilt like-for-like after the fire:
- The lab layout was changed to remove 'cul-de-sac' like designs, ensuring that evacuation from any point in the lab would be simple in an emergency.
- New safety features have been added to the lab:
- The Reactor room and evaporator rooms are now isolated and under negative pressure, fire rated for 60 minutes.
- The Evaporator room now has a seperate fire supression system, which automatically activates in the case of a fire.
- Remote monitoring of equipment has been enabled to check status
- A traffic light system is in place to indicate good/bad air quality across different rooms.
- Leak detaction is now in place, linked to a remote control panel
- New Eco-friendly elements have been added to the lab, with the capability to scale these
up further, such as
a heat recovery system and a low power consumption oven.
In addition,
now that this modern lab-design knowledge is available in-house it should also help facilitate future lab builds and rebuilds, rolling out these new features as relevant to other labs, aiding in future planning.
ISIS Deuteration Facility User Meeting 2024
On the 3rd and 4th of June 2024, the ISIS deuteration meeting was held at The Cosener’s House in Abingdon. This meeting focused on users requiring deuteration for neutron studies, both at ISIS and other national facilities such as the ESS and ANSTO.
Conference photo of the User Meeting attendees.
This was the fifth
Deuteration for Neutron Scattering Meeting, which are held 18-24 months apart. These events are an opportunity for users and deuteration specialists to meet, discuss advances in deuteration science and the future of the Deuteration Facility at ISIS. This years meeting attracted over 50 participants from the UK, Sweden and France and beyond, with attendees from the ILL, ESS, Jülich and ANSTO.
Poster session during the User Meeting.
Dr. Natasha Shirshova from Durham University, giving a presentation on "Importance of deuterated Ionic liquid for structural electrolytes" at the User Meeting.
General Updates
With the highly anticipated lab reopened, the D-Lab would like to take this opportunity to remind users about the best practices for D-Lab requests. If you require deuterated material for your experiment, it is best to involve the D-lab as soon as possible, preferably before you have even submitted your beamtime proposal, as this will allow for discussions about how long would be expected for synthesis beforehand. This will result in a better estimate for suitable timelines for the experiment. If you leave it later it is strongly advised that you
contact the D-Lab team as soon as possible.
For compounds which are routinely available in the lab, it is still worth letting the team know, especially if you require relatively large quantities. More specialised chemicals will require more time and effort to synthesise; these would potentially be more of a collaboration, rather than a service provided. As such, in addition to the general citing of the lab, it may also be nescessary to include some members of the Deuteration team as co-authors. This can be discussed when discussing the requirements.
It is also possible for students or visiting researchers to have a placement within the D-Lab if they have a suitable project and it has been discussed with the D-Lab manager.
As a rough guide, you should be contacting the D-Lab
prior to submitting a proposal which will require deuterated material to check the viability. Then once you get the approval letter, please get back in contact with the D-Lab to work out a schedule.
For more details on anything included on this page, please
contact the D-Lab shared email address and check out the Deuteration Facility
website.
