Challenge

Aureon Labs was faced with designing, building and equipping a research laboratory in four months.  They not only required a water treatment system that could produce the specified water quality, but needed equipment that could fit into a tight space. The Yonkers, New York company develops predictive tests for cancer recurrence, and provides contract research services to assist biopharmaceutical companies in developing more effective cancer treatments.

Says Dr. Charles J. DiComo, Aureon’s Director of Laboratories, “We require high-purity water for our many molecular pathology, DNA, RNA and protein applications, including the diverse tissue processing technologies.  We also carry out commercial processing and contract work, so we have to consistently hit our spec.”

Solution

To meet these requirements, Aureon purchased a complete laboratory water treatment system in August 2002. Incoming city water is fed to a central treatment system, and a programmable logic controller (PLC) monitors all alarm and operational functions.

From the central treatment system, the water is sent to a distribution loop that feeds two glassware washers, a high-purity clean steam generator, and ten point-of-use faucets and laboratory water treatment systems located in various labs.

The polishing systems are the compact PURELAB® Ultra systems, designed to produce ASTM Type I ultra-pure water for the most critical biological and analytical laboratory techniques. The quality of the water exiting the system is 18.2 megohm-cm.

To ensure that the equipment performs at its peak, Aureon has a preventive maintenance agreement that covers all lab water equipment.

Says DiComo, “With a laboratory our size, which is the life blood of our business, we need to maintain these systems, and who better than the experts who designed and installed the system to come in and service it?”

The service Siemens provides under this agreement includes system and loop sanitization, cartridge replacement and water quality testing. Since the central treatment system is in a remote location from the laboratory area, an alarm on the central system automatically alerts them of a possible system problem.

Results

DiComo reports that the lab water equipment has performed very well over the past five years, delivering consistent water quality with no system or loop operation issues. 

“The system is as rock solid as the day it was installed. I’m looking forward to getting many more years out of it,” he says.

 Aureon Labs Process Flow Diagram