Higher Education Best Practices Blog

How Colleges Can Create A More Efficient Environment

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by josh Estey, Chemist

Though the economy is slowly coming back to pre-recession levels, colleges and universities have learned not just how to get by on a leaner budget, but to thrive on one by creating a more efficient environment.

To stay competitive in an increasingly demanding market of attracting the best and brightest, higher education institutions have had to change their way of doing business to provide financial aid and services to their student body while maintaining a bottom line (higher education is, after all, big business). As contracting work is a necessary, there are just a lot of things that don’t make economic sense to undertake as an institution.

There are however, minor changes that can be made onsite to make a major difference in everyone’s wallets. As an example, nitrogen generation (gas and liquid) has come a long way in recent years and is now an affordable option rather than contracting a gas company to pick-up empty cylinders and dewars and deliver full ones. The initial cost is not cheap (somewhere between $1,000 and $20,000 depending on the amount of nitrogen needed per day), but after that operating costs are only monthly electrical bills (about the cost of running a refrigerator for a month), a savings of about 20-30% off the cost of delivered gases. The initial cost can even be split by multiple lab groups as long as their nitrogen needs don’t trump the output by the machine.

Other benefits of onsite nitrogen production include increased safety as newer machines only run when in use, and can only be turned on when an RFID linked dewar is placed in the machine. There are also automatic shut-offs to prevent overflowing (not present on most dewars from gas companies). This can also be claimed as a “greening” initiative as it saves the transportation of dewars and cylinders to and from the university. While this cost-saving option isn’t ideal for every institution’s needs, it’s an option that should be at least explored.