Chemical disinfection in the Konvak chamber
The Wroclaw University Library offers chemical disinfection service for books, magazines, archival materials, and other documents on paper, performed in a disinfection chamber.
The disinfection chamber meets the requirements of national and European standards and has appropriate safety certificates issued by the manufacturer (Konvak). The staff operating the chamber are properly trained, ensuring professional service.
The Contractor guarantees that particular care will be taken to ensure that the disinfection process parameters are consistent with the standards for archival materials and book collections.
Service characteristics
Chemical disinfection in the Konvak disinfection chamber is carried out using sterilgas S-9, which is a mixture containing 9% ethylene oxide and 91% carbon dioxide.
The estimated disinfection time for 1 batch is 4 weeks from the date of delivery of the materials by the ordering party to the WUL's seat and includes, among others:
- Batch preparation time
- Disinfection time proper: 36 hours
- Quarantine – minimum 5 days.
The process varies depending on the materials being disinfected (archives or books).
The capacity of the device is approximately 5 m³ - 20 m.b. of A4 format documents (the number of volumes, depending on the number of pages in individual volumes, varies from 800 to 1000 items).
The WUL does not classify incoming materials for biocidal sensitivity. The customer is responsible for assessing submitted materials for sensitivity to ethylene oxide and other physical factors (resulting from the disinfection process technology used in the Konvak disinfection chamber).
The service does not include microbiological testing of received materials or assessment of disinfection effectiveness.
Materials subjected to disinfection
The following items are accepted for disinfection: books, magazines, archival materials, and other documents on paper.
Materials with a visible high level of contamination are accepted only for separate disinfection - a fee applies for the entire volume of the disinfection chamber, regardless of the actual number of meters of materials.
- WUL does not classify the materials it receives in terms of their sensitivity to ethylene oxide,
- the service does not include microbiological testing of received materials and assessment of disinfection effectiveness.
Important:
- no disinfection services are provided for paintings, graphics, sculptures, fabrics, interior design elements, etc.;
- following materials are excluded from disinfection: foil-wrapped materials, materials containing plastic, metal elements, and photographic materials;
- excessively damp materials with a relative humidity exceeding 70% are not accepted for disinfection.
Receiving and collection of materials
Materials entrusted for disinfection should be packed only in paper/cardboard packaging that allows the gas to penetrate inside without the need for unpacking by the chamber staff.
The customer is obliged to:
- agreeing with the contractor the date of delivery of disinfection materials,
- conversion of entrusted materials larger or smaller than A4 format into this format,
- specifying the quantity of materials entrusted with an accuracy of 0.5 running meters, rounding up, but not less than 1 running meter.
- delivering the entrusted materials to the contractor's premises and bringing them to the preliminary storage at the customer's own expense,
- preparing a list/protocol of the entrusted materials in two identical copies, one for the ordering party and second one for the WUL,
- collecting materials after the disinfection process directly from the contractor's premises (from the quarantine storage) and removing them at your own expense.
The number of materials accepted from the customer at one time is limited by the capacity of the preliminary storage and quarantine storage.