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Bead baths: a sanitary alternative to water baths
Using metal beads to heat and cool: efficient, sanitary, sustainable
Utrecht Medical Center’s Nuclear Medicine
unit uses bead baths as a sanitary solution
for thawing radiopharmaceuticals. Heated
beads do the job just as quickly as water.
The use of water baths for heating and cooling purposes
comes with a list of familiar complaints: low water levels,
limescale on the edges, and drips and spills when removing
materials from the bath. Not to mention the wet mess created
when baths are emptied. More importantly, water baths can be
a microbiological hazard. Reason enough for UMC’s Nuclear
Medicine department to invest in a metal bead bath.
www.labinsights.nl ©maXus media
Using metal beads to heat and cool:
efficient, sanitary, sustainable
Bead baths:
a sanitary
alternative to
water baths
Utrecht Medical Center’s Nuclear Medicine
unit uses bead baths as a sanitary solution
for thawing radiopharmaceuticals. Heated
beads do the job just as quickly as water.
Wouter Oude Groothuis | Translation: Word’s Worth | Photography: FOODnote
The use of water baths for heating and cooling purposes
comes with a list of familiar complaints: low water levels,
limescale on the edges, and drips and spills when removing
materials from the bath. Not to mention the wet mess created
when baths are emptied. More importantly, water baths can be
a microbiological hazard. Reason enough for UMC’s Nuclear
Medicine department to invest in a metal bead bath.
Bacterial growth
The Nuclear Medicine lab develops new radiopharmaceuticals
and radiotherapeuticals. There are strict guidelines for these
radioactive preparations and the use of water baths for heating
and cooling them is forbidden. This means special lab facilities
and equipment are needed, but these can be affordable,
says
Remmert de Roos, research analyst and quality assurance
manager
at
the
Nuclear
Medicine
unit.
“The
radiopharmaceuticals
we work with are generally intended for patients with inoperable
tumors. These patients are injected with a preparation
that
attaches to specific receptors
on the tumor cells. Different
types
of
radiopharmaceuticals
are
used
for
PET
scan
imaging
or
scintigraphy (gamma ray imaging). If we find irregularities that
LAB EQUIPMENT
Remmert de Roos, quality assurance manager at UMC’s Nuclear
Medicine unit, says “for sanitary reasons, we prefer not to use water
baths to thaw deep-frozen radiopharmaceuticals.”
‘Baths are ‘clean’
because the beads can be
disinfected with alcohol’
are cause for further treatment, we can inject another preparation
with another type of radioactive element for radiation of
the
tumor—local radiotherapy. Sometimes, these preparations
need
to be thawed shortly before use in a water bath, because
some
preparations are less stable at ambient temperature. The
deep-frozen
therapeutic preparations are preferably thawed in a
cleanroom,
where water baths are forbidden because of potential
bacterial
growth.”
Solution
To replace the water in baths, the Utrecht lab chose to work with
specially developed multifunctional beads. These prevent contamination
and
scaling
and
guarantee
the
baths
used
are
‘clean’
because
the beads can be disinfected with alcohol. Thanks to
February 2020 | LABinsights
36
www.labinsights.nl ©maXus media
Radioactive preparations are
thawed in a bead bath for one
hour, shortly before they are
used on a patient. This is an
efficient and sanitary solution.
Advantages Advantages of water bath beadsof water bath beads
X No need for disinfection; the beads can be
cleaned with alcohol
X
The beads are energy efficient; they conduct
heat and cold well
X
Using beads saves several hundred liters of
water per year
X No need to use watertight tubes
X
The beads are reusable and therefore better for
the environment
X
Annoyances like limescale are a thing of the
past.
Disadvantage: although the beads conduct heat
well, they are slightly slower to heat than water.
More information (in Dutch) is available at:
www.boomlab.nl/assortiment/benodigdheden/www.boomlab.nl/assortiment/benodigdheden/
beadsbeads
the beads, there is no need for germicides or warm water bath
disinfection, refilling, emptying or rinsing. This saves time and
money. And it is also convenient that the erlenmeyer flasks,
bottles, point tubes and multiwell plates can simply be placed
in a bath of beads without any kind of rack, with no danger of
bathwater seeping in. Lab Armor’s recyclable beads — supplied
by Boom — can be used at temperatures ranging from -8
ºC
to 3,200 ºC. This also makes them suitable for transporting
deep-frozen
samples from the freezer to a work bench instead
of
ice from an ice machine.
Transfer
LAB EQUIPMENT
Not all water baths are suitable for the use of metal beads, says
De Roos: “The supplier told me which ones were and weren’t.
Fortunately, ours were fine. We didn’t have to purchase other
water baths. I was also told to heat the baths not only from the
bottom, but also from the sides, as this speeds up the heat
transfer to the beads.”
De Roos says he can only think of one disadvantage of using
the beads. “They transfer heat less efficiently than water. I only
know what it’s like to heat up a pharmaceutical preparation in a
heavy lead container, packed in dry ice with a temperature of -80
ºC. From my own observation, I can say that thawing in a bead
bath takes longer, but not that much longer. It takes 60 minutes
instead of 50. That’s a difference we can live with.”
February 2020 | LABinsights
37
