I just had the fastest and most enjoyable pump oil change of my career, thanks to a colleague. We use large Welsh DuoSeal belt-driven pumps installed in metal cabinets under the hoods and these beasts are rugged, dependable – but so heavy: They take over 3 liters of oil to fill and the whole damned thing weights about 50 kilos. The oil drain valve is inconveniently located right near the bottom so the pump cannot be easily drained inside the cabinet. The normal oil change procedure requires disconnecting the vacuum hose and dragging the pump out. I would prop the pump on an empty solvent barrel, put oil collection bucket beneath the drain valve and keep draining, tilting, flushing, draining, filling, cursing. Lifting the pump requires two pairs of hands, the oil drips everywhere, and given the large and awkward shape of the (very heavy) re-filled pump that has to be finally coaxed back in and over the cabinet lip, the vacuum hose reattached and the inadvertent vacuum leaks fixed, it is a pretty unpopular job – a job that keeps getting postponed for as long as is possible, while pumps are left sloshing with tired crud that has the look and smell of burnt molasses. But not much longer!
Prodded by his injured back and by desperation, my colleague conceived a brilliant apparatus – he took a large (4L) Erlenmeyer filtration flask closed with a stopper with a tube through it. To the tube he attached a cheap vinyl transparent tubing (like you would use for water in reflux condensers) and connected it to the oil drain valve at the bottom of the pump so that he can aspirate the spent oil by vacuum. Turns out, if the oil is warm (from a pump that has been run, so it is less viscous), it can by sucked out through the drain valve into the Erlenmeyer filtration flask under house vacuum in few minutes. After one fill with flushing oil, 2 min pump run and another suction-assisted drain and final re-fill, the entire oil changing operation can be completed in less than 15 minutes. No mess, no need to take the pump out, no need to disconnect the vacuum hose from the pump.
Our biologists of course claimed credit for the pump oil change idea, for having used this kind of setup previously when sucking off liquor from cells in multi-well plates. But I am afraid the true origin of this oil change breakthrough is rather more disturbing. You see, my colleague is leaving for medical school in few weeks and in preparation, he has already taken the anatomy labs. As I was sucking out gallon of alarmingly dark rotten muck from my pump with his gadget, he calmly observed that the really good, top-of-the-line embalming machines can aspirate blood while at the same time pumping formaldehyde solution back into the empty veins: The happy operator just needs to correctly insert the inlet and outlet tubes into the still body, turn on the flush routine and wait until the aspirate finally starts coming out clear…
Org Prep Daily 