Should You Replace Your Old Biological Safety Cabinets?

If your laboratory is outfitted with biological safety cabinets that are 10 or more years old, you may be wondering if you should replace them with newer, more energy efficient models.

And you wouldn’t be alone. A recent survey on biological safety cabinets in The Scientist indicated that 22% of respondents are working with a biosafety cabinet that is more than 10 years old. And 14% of the total respondents also indicated that they plan to purchase a cabinet within the next 12+ months. Their primary purpose for doing so? To replace old or outdated equipment.

The best biological safety cabinets have a long useful life, often in excess of 20 years. Designs change over time, with an emphasis placed on user comfort, performance and sustainability – but safety and performance should never be compromised.

One way you can quantify such design changes is to compare a component (energy and heat reduction) of the operational cost savings you should expect when upgrading. As an example, the chart below compares Baker’s SterilGARD III Advance (launched more than 15 years ago) with our most recent SterilGARD e3 model.

If your lab uses a biosafety cabinet that is 15 or more years old, and you replace it with a newer, more energy-efficient cabinet, you can expect to receive an annual operating cost savings of up to $1,900 per unit, or $28,500 over that same 15-year period of time, when run under optimal conditions.

In this scenario, the cabinet performance pays for itself in just a handful of years.

The more cabinets you replace, the more you save. And this analysis ignores additional savings from filter changes, maintenance and service costs, which is a little more difficult to project (subject to environmental conditions of the lab, customer requirements, and certifier discretion).