Info 101: General Purpose Fume Hoods

Hey Folks,

Been a long time! I was recently traveling a lot, so I wasn't able to write much. But with my recent journey, I've learned from quite a few people working inside the laboratory about their difficulty of differentiating the different types of fume hoods that exist in the market.

So in the next few weeks, i will be writing a series of blog topics on the different kind of fume hoods. I'll start with what is commonly used and that is the General Purpose Fume Hood category.

Photo courtesy of Esco

This kind of hood as shown on the photo above is applicable for simple laboratory applications that consumes little or less reagents. The kind of applications that can be done inside the hood are the following:

• Dilution of reagents
• Mixing and/or transferring of chemicals such as acids, bases and aqueous solutions.
• Evaporation of aqueous solutions (as long as it does not involve the use of strong and excessive volume of acids).
• Precipitation-Reaction
• Separation techniques such as paper chromatography, electrophoresis and fractionation.
• Solvent Extraction
• Sample preparation
• Titration
• Filtration 

If the application involves large volume of corrosive acids, radioactive materials, perchloric acid and etc., this might require a specialized fume hood. The internal chamber of a general purpose fume hood cannot withstand these kind of application and doing so might not prolong the life of your cabinet.

Watch out for Part 2 of this blog which will tackle more about these specialized hoods.