How To Clean a Centrifuge & Maintenance Tips

Lab Academy

It’s the same for everything that’s important to you – if you treat it properly and handle it with care, you will be able to enjoy it for a long time. Centrifuges are no exception, with regular cleaning and maintenance required to ensure your instrument operates safely and effectively.

Below, read our expert tips on how to clean a centrifuge, including centrifuge lids, rotors, and accessories, for optimal performance year after year. You can also find our top tips for routine centrifuge maintenance, with recommended routine tasks on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis.

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Cleaning & disinfection‌

How to clean centrifuge rotors & accessories‌

How to clean a contaminated centrifuge rotor‌

Autoclaving‌

The sterilization of rotors and accessories may be desirable to protect humans from pathogens or samples from contamination. Sterilization is a process that eliminates all forms of microbial life, including transmissible agents such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, spore forms, etc.
A widely-used method for heat sterilization is autoclaving, where equipment and other objects are sterilized with hot steam. For instance, a typical autoclaving program is performed at 121° C and 2-bar atmospheric pressure for 15 to 20 minutes.
Several fixed-angle and many swing-out rotor crosses as well as buckets from Eppendorf are autoclavable and have been rigorously tested and approved under these conditions. The aluminum rotors have a special anodized coating, which protects the metal from deeper corrosion effects. Steel swing-bucket rotor crosses with a heat-fixed powder coating are not suitable for autoclaving. If you are in doubt about your rotor, please ask the manufacturer whether autoclaving is possible for that model.

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Eppendorf offers a second type of aluminium fixed-angle rotor with a special PTFE coating, which has outstanding chemical resistance against phenol, acetonitrile, DMSO, acetone, trichloroacetic acid, acetic acid and sodium hypochlorite. This coating is applied on top of the actual anodic coating.
In some cases, autoclaving at temperatures of 121°C for 20 minutes may not be sufficient to sterilize a rotor. Some manufacturers state that autoclaving at 134°C for at least 18 minutes should be sufficient [1], but in some cases, even this is not enough to deactivate the disease agent, especially when using material with very high infectiousness.
According to available material, only a few rotors on the market can be autoclaved at temperatures higher than 121°C. The customer thus has a very limited choice of available rotors – including Eppendorf’s high-quality aluminum rotors – for these applications. Selected Eppendorf rotors have been extensively tested at 142°C for 2 hours or 135°C for 20 min.

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Lubrication‌

Baseline procedure in case of contamination‌

You probably intend to use it for a scientific or medical research or an innovation that makes our daily lives easier in some way. And you would like to work towards these goals without any problems along the way. This is why you should care for it – on a daily, weekly and annual basis. We are going to show you how to do that correctly and effectively.
First, pay attention to the manufacturer’s recommendations. If you can’t find what you are looking for in the user manual, contact the manufacturer. Otherwise you risk damaging the centrifuge, accessories or rotors. Please also check the centrifuge regularly for damage caused by corrosion.

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Recommended routine maintenance

Daily:

Before and after use, check the rotor and lid for scratches, dust, or spilled sample material. (Missing anodization on a rotor made of aluminum is a clear indication that a more detailed evaluation is necessary.)
When using an aerosol-tight rotor, check the seal of the lid.
Clean your centrifuge on a regular basis to protect your investment and to maximize the lifetime of your instrument and guarantee operational safety, e.g. to prevent accumulation of deposits and to eliminate any possibility of corrosion.
If necessary, wipe the following parts with a lint-free microfiber cloth:
- Centrifuge housing
- Chamber
- Rotor shaft
- Rotor
- Rotor lid/caps
Keep the lid of the centrifuge open to reduce pressure on the spring lifts of the centrifuge lid. For refrigerated centrifuges, leave the lid of the centrifuge and the rotor open and allow the device to defrost over night.

Weekly to monthly:

Keep a maintenance log.
Carefully remove rotor from centrifuge.
Make a detailed inspection of the centrifuge rotor, rotor lid, and buckets for cracks and corrosion. For a fixed-angle rotor, check underneath the rotor as well as the tube bores. For a swing-bucket rotor, pay special attention to the pivots and grooves. Differentiate clearly between a scratch and a gouge (= more than damaged color) when evaluating your rotor. A rotor with a gouge or even a small crack must be replaced. Due to the manufacturing process, color variations may occur on rotors marked „coated”. These color variations do not affect service life or resistance to chemicals.

Annually:

Check with your local safety officers for any local regulations regarding centrifuge maintenance. For example, in Germany, regulation DGUV 100 - 500 (formerly BGR 500) requires centrifuges exceeding 500 W nominal power consumption (without refrigeration system) or 10,000 Nm kinetic energy to be inspected by an authorized technician at least once a year in operating condition and at least every three years in a disassembled state.

Eppendorf recommends an annual preventive maintenance inspection by a trained service technician of the centrifuge, rotor, and accessories to guarantee operational safety and maximize the service life of your instrument.
When using refrigerated centrifuges, clean the refrigeration mesh of the heat exchanger with a brush at least twice a year. We further recommend cleaning the condensate drainage channels on a regular basis, e.g. using a narrow bottle brush.

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References

[1] Lawson, V. A. et al. (2007). Enzymatic detergent treatment protocol that reduces protease-resistant prion protein load and infectivity from surgical-steel monofilaments contaminated with a human-derived prion strain. J Gen Virol vol. 88 no. 10: 2905–2914