![]() ![]() ![]() “Look around your workplace and reflect on your daily activities. “Our grants are available to all disciplines, and we really encourage anyone with an idea for reducing waste, saving energy or water, increasing environmental benefits or generally improving sustainability outcomes or processes to consider applying. “Sustainability is a lot broader than many people think. “If anyone else was interested in having one of these loaders for their own chromatography machine, our workshop would now be able to assist in professional construction.” Sustainable ideas in any disciplineĬhristine McCallum, a program officer for the UQ Sustainability team, says Jos’s project proves how sustainable thinking can be applied to all sorts of different projects. “The UQ Green Fund grant enabled us to build a prototype, and we’re enjoying the benefits right away. These changes are based on real-life working feedback from scientists using the machine for diverse research purposes. “For example, we’re currently making some tweaks to make it easier to remove the materials inside the reusable tube components. “At the moment, eight of us synthetic chemists use it almost daily, and we’re continuing to improve the design. “And this loader would work with any machine. “A chromatography machine is a standard piece of equipment that you will find in chemistry laboratories around the world,” he explains. The loader could be reproduced for other chromatography machines, both at the University of Queensland and beyond, Jos says. “Having the new loader makes a big difference for our lab, both financially and from an environmental perspective,” he says. “The loader immediately eliminated our need to purchase and burn through large quantities of plastic syringes, and there’s certainly no difference to the output of the compounds themselves. “It functions exactly as we hoped it would,” Jos says of his innovation. ![]() The new steel solid loader negates the need for disposable plastic syringes entirely, as well as allowing the reuse of certain inserts required for machine operation.ĭesigned by Jos and incorporating two rounds of initial feedback from colleagues, the loader was built onsite at the school’s workshop and has been in use since last October. Used to purify compounds for chemistry research, these machines typically require consumption of several hundred syringes every year to load and extract material. Jos was a successful 2020 recipient, putting forward a proposal to construct a new solid loader tube to fit into the chemistry school’s chromatography machine. The UQ Sustainability team administers the annual grants, which are available for application by any UQ staff or students who have an idea for a small sustainability initiative on campus. To subscribe to it, you will need a RSS Reader.More than 500 fewer disposable plastic syringes are now used each year at the UQ School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, thanks to a new piece of equipment designed by UQ postdoctoral fellow Dr Jos Kistemaker and funded by a UQ Green Fund grant. This RSS feeds allow you to stay up to date with the latest SENSEX values on continuous basis. This is an RSS feed from the Bombay Stock Exchange website. Download any online RSS reader of your choice. ![]()
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