Lose the shamrocks, keep the green
March 19, 2008
The nice thing about St. Patrick’s Day this year was that it let us forget for a moment the disturbing possibility that in 2009 everyone seems to resent everyone else’s wealth.
In much the same way, the 2009 rendition of Pittcon, subdued as it was in chilly Chicago with just a little more than 17,000 attendees, was probably a welcome respite for many from the gloom of the office. The economy may have temporarily put a damper on a larger “green” revolution, but the laborious product development by many vendors in the preceding year clearly reflected a steady commitment to the “green” priorities of their customers.
The best excuse for going “green”, of course, is saving energy. I’m not a fan of scaling back R&D in the name of conserving energy—we want to move forward, not backward. But the ability to get the necessary work done while spending less on supplies, electricity or otherwise, is an eminently sellable one, even if the implementation costs extra in the short term.
Take, for example, Concoa’s newest iteration of the automated gas supply switch it pioneered in 1996. Equipped with a LAN-enabled logic circuit and adjustable digital setting, it seems at first to be overkill for the task of switching between gas tanks. Designed with the cryogenic tank user in mind, the
IntelliSwitch II greatly reduces gas loss in liquid tanks by sensing pressure levels. The ability to switchover automatically before relief vents waste valuable gas is a significant resource saver. The addition of remote control through the internet is a nice touch.
Methodology was also a big green selling point at Pittcon, where Illinois-based Systea Scientific touted its new USEPA approval for a
nitrate-based wastewater compliance monitoring method that eliminated the generation of hazardous waste, and exposure to compounds such as hydrazine and cadmium. Among the chromatography companies, perceived demand for reduced column consumption and longer-life has led to innovations from NLISIS, which last year won an Editor’s Choice Award from
Laboratory Equipment Magazine for its
column joining MeltfitOne, and Shimadzu, whose
Shim-pack XR-ODS conserves dwindling supplies of the solvent acetonitrile.
Even Thermo Fisher, the elephant in the room, had toned down their booth experience in comparison to years past. But among their many cutting-edge instruments in the Thermo Scientific division were the Orion Green pH electrodes. They are the first glass pH-sensing elements to do away with leaded glass. Mercury, which is also common in many electrodes, is absent as well, keeping a little more heavy metal out of the waste stream and helping out an environmental scourge.
This is just a glimpse of the “green” I saw Pittcon, a more thorough review of which you’ll see in the next issue of R&D Magazine. If even a few of these products can help companies save some money in 2009, perhaps the economic headache will fade as quickly as the St. Patty’s Day one.