SERIOUS  ABOUT  STANDARDS On most nights, the university’s chemistry lab housed one or two ambitious students working diligently into the wee hours of the morning. But tonight, unlike most nights, it was empty. Without the students, the lab held an eerie quiet. A household refrigerator, the room’s only occupant, hummed softly against the south wall. Chemicals stored inside the consumer-grade refrigerator slowly exhaled a volatile vapor. Every few minutes the refrigerator’s defrost timer created a small arc of electricity inside its housing. This ritual repeated itself many times, yet the vapor and the arc ignored each other. But at 3:29 A.M. they met at last. The explosion ripped the refrigerator door from its latch and hinges. The door hurtled across the room, tore through a window and began its descent to the parking lot three stories below. Back in the lab, a sprinkler system celebrated the happy union of arc and vapor by inundating the room and its contents with water…

This entertaining dramatization is in fact a composite of two events that occurred on American campuses. The actual accounts can be found at the link below.

By choosing Marvel Scientific Commercial UL Listed refrigerators and freezers, you are choosing the performance and safety that is assured by our commercial-tough construction and our adherence to strict standards. It is unfortunate that in laboratories worldwide, household refrigerators are pressed into duties they were not designed to fulfill. When these units operate inconsistently or fail, consequences can range from inconvenient to costly to dangerous.

The following link contains true accounts which vividly illustrate some of the many ways a household appliance can fail you in a critical application:

"Lessons Learned: Flammables in Refrigerators FYI"
University and private-sector stories and photos.
 

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Download PDF document that spells out the differences between Commercial UL listed and household refrigeration units:

"The Difference is in the UL Listing"

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Helpful links concerning laboratory fire prevention:

"Preventing Laboratory Fires"
General fire prevention recommendations from university laboratory safety manual.

"Only you can prevent lab fires"
Fire safety recommendations for the lab.
 

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Marvel Scientific offers three lines of refrigerators to meet your needs: General Purpose, Flammable Material Storage and Hazardous Location (Explosion Proof).

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