Laboratory refurbishment programme at BIP

Citation

(1998), "Laboratory refurbishment programme at BIP", Pigment & Resin Technology, Vol. 27 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/prt.1998.12927bab.002

Laboratory refurbishment programme at BIP

Laboratory refurbishment programme at BIP

Resins and plastics manufacturer BIP Limited has completed the first part of a major programme to refurbish and re-equip all of its research laboratories in the Technical Centre, as well as Quality Control laboratories in the different business areas, at the company's Oldbury, West Midlands plant.

Costing in the region of £50,000 for every laboratory, the scheme's primary object is to install a central fume extraction system in every individual laboratory. This will enable all chemical work to be carried out beneath a central extraction canopy, greatly improving the working environment for the research chemists. Extraction fans draw air from behind the research workers, over the equipment and out through the ducting. Air flow rates and the numbers of air changes meet recently introduced British Standard recommendations for fume canopies.

First to be completed was a laboratory specialising in resins R&D. For this laboratory ­ as will be the case in the others where refurbishment work is already in progress ­ the opportunity was taken to upgrade systems and install new equipment.

A so-called "trombone" oven has been commissioned in the refurbished resins R&D laboratory, increasing the company's ability to reproduce accurately the conditions in industrial paint stoving lines. It gives fine control over cure schedules and permits samples with the company's "Beetle" cross-linking paint resins to be placed in and removed from the oven for very short periods. It obviates any need to open the door which is particularly important with cans and coil coating.