What is a ‘fluid load’?
Fluid or liquid loads typically comprise solutions or chemicals used in the laboratory environment, e.g. a growth medium, but could be any non-solid that requires sterilization. A growth medium or culture medium is a solid, liquid or semi-solid designed to support the growth of micro-organisms or cells under test conditions. Different types of media are used for growing different types of cells. An autoclave is used to sterilize media before use. Although many types of media require sterilization at 121°C for 15 minutes, different sterilizing temperatures and times may be necessary for certain types of media, and therefore any autoclave used for the sterilization of media must be capable of sterilizing at a variety of temperatures.
Fluid discard
Fluid discard loads will inevitably comprise of waste fluids that need to be sterilized prior to being disposed of. Typical fluid discard loads could consist of used or redundant media such as Nutrient Broth, reagents, liquid specimen samples, cleaning solutions, biological waste etc.
Sealed fluids
Some fluid loads may require to be sterilized in special sealed containers. Air purging (or ‘freesteaming’) is normally sufficient to remove air, and extended freesteaming should be unnecessary. As with media preparation the speed of processing is vital to the quality of the end product and often temperatures in excess of 121°C will be used to speed up the sterilization process. The cooling time should be as short as possible.
