Learning to organize the space within your ultra-low temerature freezers can help you avoid handling and retrieval problems with your biological samples. Organizing your freezer space can make your work procedures more efficient and even reduce the over-all investment cost in your laboratory equipment.

Our experience in dealing with users of low temperature freezers, liguid nitrogen freezers, and dewars has shown the following benefits when they are optimally organized –

• An organized freezer is cost efficient. You can reduce the number of freezers required to store your samples and cell lines.
• An organized freezer is time efficient. You can locate, retrieve, and replace your samples easily and quickly.
• An organized freezer is safer. Your samples are protected, less likely to be damaged, and less exposed to room temperature.
• An organized freezer provides better user safety. Less time accessing samples means less exposure to hazard for laboratory staff.

Selecting the correct freezer racks and the right type of containers for the racks will optimize the space used in your freezer and provide the other benefits mentioned above. Here, then, are some guidelines and helpful hints for choosing these storage elements for your freezer.

Whether your storage unit is an upright freezer, a chest freezer, or a liquid nitrogen freezer, storing any bio sample without using a freezer rack will not only reduce the capacity for specimen storage, but it will also increase the risk of damaging samples through mishandling. This is true whether you are storing bone marrow, stem cell, cord blood, or any other type of cell or tissue samples. Selecting the correct rack and container will reduce this risk and provide for the maximum use of your freezer space.

Here is the process for determining and selecting the best rack for any type of sample storage.

3. Determine whether a box is needed to hold your sample container or item.

4. Determine the style of the freezer rack:
Will the freezer racks style you have chosen fit into the your available freezer space? Be sure the freezer item or storage box you have chosen will fit comfortably into the freezer rack and not extend beyond the face of the rack. Choosing the proper freezer rack size will prevent damage to your box and possibly to the sample stored within it.

5. Determine the depth, width, and height of the shelf that your freezer rack will be stored on. When measuring, be sure your freezer is free of ice buildup. This will insure the most accurate measurement of the storage space within your freezer, whether you are storing, vials, plates, microscope slides, or any other type of sample container.

6. Finally, determine any desired options for your freezer racks. For instance, one of the options on freezer racks is a locking rod. Locking rods provide a safety feature which holds your boxes or other storage containers securely in place and helps prevent accidental slipping and damage of your stored specimens.

1. Select your type of freezer:

Upright
Chest
Liquid Nitrogen

2. What are you storing?:

3. Select your box style:

4. Select your box cell divider:

81-cell (holds 81 vials)
For use with internally or externally threaded cap.

5. Determine dimensions of your shelf space:

6. Determine model of rack based on box style (#3 above) and the shelf dimensions (#5 above):

The height and depth of the rack must be a minimum
of .25 inches less than the shelf height and depth.

7. Determine number of racks that can be stored in your shelf space:

Freezer width
divided by rack width
= maximum number of racks.

40 / 5.50 = 7 racks

Maximum number of boxes
x number of vials per box
= maximum number of vials

112 x 81 = 9,072