Feb 4, 2010

Corrosives cabinet

Well today P, MSG and me as well as our new PhD student attempted a rescue of the destroyed corrosives cabinet that we use for storing our acids. As we speak I feel I have inhaled about a litre of the brown liquid that coats every inch of that damn cabinet. The stuff is everywhere, and its all because some stupid foreign exchange student broke a goddamn bottle of bromine or something in there and didn't tell us about it. We found it cracked and leaking about 3 months after she left.

So P and MSG finally wrangled me into helping them pull the contents of the cabinet and then relabel and seal them all with parafilm. So after clearing the top shelf we decided that starting this at 3pm was probably a bad idea but we kept on and I decided to wipe out the cabinet. The paper towel was covered in a brown/orange liquid and the more I wiped it out the more there seemed to be.

So now, we have a terribly abused corrosive cabinet and its still not clean. The stuff just won't stop oozing from the pores of the cabinet. We are pretty much calling it a write-off I think. But now I feel like shit.

7 comments:

  1. I'm sorry to hear.

    I did things like that and I learn to be honest because I think I will learn how to solve the problems. But at the same time, I hope especially my supervisor doesn't think I'm dangerous or have the wrong impression and decided to discontinue supervising me :(

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  2. Maybe use some sodium thiosulfate to get rid of the bromine.

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  3. yeah what Gruson said. Splash it everywhere then dump in shit loads, let it sit for a while then throw in heaps of vermiculite and get a paint scraper and scrape all that shit off the sides of that bad boy.

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  4. lol that is what I was thinking about doing but MSG and P are both set on dumping it and getting a new cabinet.

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  5. those cabinets are expensive, take ages to get in, and would probably cost a shit load to dispose of.

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  6. There's a few free ones lying around in the building that we could have, so that will cut back on the time we would waste cleaning it up. We simply don't have the space to do this sort of clean up... unless we take it down to the oval

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  7. take it into the shower and get the firehose onto it ;O

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