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<p>Toni Kiel accompanied the development of our calculation tool for weeks and provided us with helpful sources and professional advice, so that we could assign all of our potential consumptions into scopes and eventually translate them into emissions. Thanks to his assistance we could actually determine the carbon footprint of our lab work.</p> | <p>Toni Kiel accompanied the development of our calculation tool for weeks and provided us with helpful sources and professional advice, so that we could assign all of our potential consumptions into scopes and eventually translate them into emissions. Thanks to his assistance we could actually determine the carbon footprint of our lab work.</p> | ||
− | <h2> Greenhouse gas calculation</h2> | + | <h2>Greenhouse gas calculation</h2> |
<p>Calculating the carbon footprint of our own lab work was an important goal for us, as it is the only way off actually determining the most influencing factors regarding GHG emissions. While there are a lot of online tools to calculate your personal carbon footprint or the carbon footprint of your travel by plane, train or bus, we found nothing comparable for the GHG of lab work. Since we set our minds on determining the factors that add most to the carbon footprint of our lab work there was no way around creating a <a href="https://2017.igem.org/Team:TU_Dresden/iGEM-goes-green/Resources" style="color: green">tool</a> by ourselves. </p> | <p>Calculating the carbon footprint of our own lab work was an important goal for us, as it is the only way off actually determining the most influencing factors regarding GHG emissions. While there are a lot of online tools to calculate your personal carbon footprint or the carbon footprint of your travel by plane, train or bus, we found nothing comparable for the GHG of lab work. Since we set our minds on determining the factors that add most to the carbon footprint of our lab work there was no way around creating a <a href="https://2017.igem.org/Team:TU_Dresden/iGEM-goes-green/Resources" style="color: green">tool</a> by ourselves. </p> | ||
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<div class="contentbox"> | <div class="contentbox"> | ||
− | <h1 class="box-heading"> Integration</h1> | + | <h1 class="box-heading">Integration</h1> |
<h2>What have we done to integrate the gained knowledge and to reduce GHG emissions?</h2> | <h2>What have we done to integrate the gained knowledge and to reduce GHG emissions?</h2> | ||
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<p>By sharing devices and thoroughly planning of experiments no-load running can be avoided and thus power consumption can be reduced. Sometimes it is reasonable to (literally) go the extra mile and incubate your plates in the 37°C room (if there is one at your institute) instead of turning on the incubator in your lab for incubating one petri dish. We tried to share as many devices as possible like our ultra-low temperature freezer, our ice-machine, autoclaves, thermocycler, plate reader etc with other working groups at our institute. Furthermore, we collected media and materials of the whole team for autoclaving or tried to autoclave our stuff together with materials that were needed for practical courses anyways. Reconsidering working routines means also to differentiate between reasonable actions and convenience. Is it necessary that computers or incubaters run all time? </p> | <p>By sharing devices and thoroughly planning of experiments no-load running can be avoided and thus power consumption can be reduced. Sometimes it is reasonable to (literally) go the extra mile and incubate your plates in the 37°C room (if there is one at your institute) instead of turning on the incubator in your lab for incubating one petri dish. We tried to share as many devices as possible like our ultra-low temperature freezer, our ice-machine, autoclaves, thermocycler, plate reader etc with other working groups at our institute. Furthermore, we collected media and materials of the whole team for autoclaving or tried to autoclave our stuff together with materials that were needed for practical courses anyways. Reconsidering working routines means also to differentiate between reasonable actions and convenience. Is it necessary that computers or incubaters run all time? </p> | ||
− | < | + | <h3>Reconsidering machine settings</h3> |
− | < | + | <h4>Ultra-low-temperature freezer</h4> |
<p>The power consumption of just one ULT freezer is equal to 2 - 3 average german households. <a target="_blank" href="http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/average-household-electricity-consumption">[1]</a>. That is why we have set our minds to rising the temperature of our ultra low temperature freezer from -80°C to -70°C which safes up to 40 % of its total energy consumption.<a target="_blank" href="http://www.freezerchallenge.org/temperature-tuning.html">[2]</a>. It was not hard to convince our head of institute of this action as he has an interest in prolonging the longevity of his device and raising the temperature reduces the burden on the compressor, making a failure of the system less likely. There is a lot of prove as well, that the sample quality is not influenced by storage at -70°C (have a look at this list of <a target="_blank" href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13UvBeoXAhwSHshSYoUDHwcxWiW7qYLnUb-eLwxJbCYs/edit#gid=0">successfully preserved samples</a> ) </p> | <p>The power consumption of just one ULT freezer is equal to 2 - 3 average german households. <a target="_blank" href="http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/average-household-electricity-consumption">[1]</a>. That is why we have set our minds to rising the temperature of our ultra low temperature freezer from -80°C to -70°C which safes up to 40 % of its total energy consumption.<a target="_blank" href="http://www.freezerchallenge.org/temperature-tuning.html">[2]</a>. It was not hard to convince our head of institute of this action as he has an interest in prolonging the longevity of his device and raising the temperature reduces the burden on the compressor, making a failure of the system less likely. There is a lot of prove as well, that the sample quality is not influenced by storage at -70°C (have a look at this list of <a target="_blank" href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13UvBeoXAhwSHshSYoUDHwcxWiW7qYLnUb-eLwxJbCYs/edit#gid=0">successfully preserved samples</a> ) </p> | ||
Revision as of 17:43, 29 October 2017