Modernization of the Pancoe Cage Wash Facility with a New Soiled Bedding Removal System

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Project Summary The Center for Comparative Medicine (CCM), at Northwestern University, is the university-wide animal care and housing unit. CCM houses a wide variety of research animal species and supports cage washing facilities on both the Evanston and Chicago campuses. CCM’s 19-year- old Pancoe cage washing facility is the sole cage washing facility on the Evanston campus. Plans are underway to renovate this cage washing facility, providing an opportunity to find a solution to the manual soiled bedding removal process. Currently CCM staff are manually dumping soiled bedding from cages, using a down draft dump station, which collects the soiled bedding into bagged bins. The bins are then manually lifted, and soiled bedding bags are dumped into bulk carts. The heavy bulk carts, filled with soiled bedding waste, are then manually transported several times a day, through public hallways and elevators to a dumpster located on a dock in an adjoining building. The objective of this project is to modernize and improve the soiled bedding handling of the Pancoe cage wash facility, through the purchase of a new Northwestern Systems Corp Sure-Flo S200 Series Soiled Bedding Removal System. This soiled bedding removal system utilizes a tubular drag-chain design. This design uses a continuous series of discs pulled through a transport pipe to convey soiled animal bedding and materials from the cage washroom to a designated waste container room. This soiled bedding removal system will reduce manual processes, thereby increasing the overall cage handling capacity and operational efficiencies of the Pancoe cage wash facility. Additionally, this new equipment will reduce potential for employee injury and allergen exposure, because the dump station will be designed with a downdraft unit that captures dust and allergens, when integrated with the dust collection unit. The soiled bedding will be immediately contained and conveyed through the piping into contained bulk carts, thus eliminating a significant amount of movement of the heavy soiled bedding bulk carts through corridors. National Institutes of Health funding of this proposal will in these ways benefit investigators as well as by increasing overall cage handling capacity, thereby allowing research programs to grow and new faculty to be recruited to the university.