ELGA Labwater PURELAB® Chorus Scoops Gold at the A’ Design Awards

ELGA LabWater’s PURELAB® Chorus has won a prestigious Gold A’ Design Award in the scientific instruments, medical devices and research equipment category.

The A’ Design Award uses rigorous evaluation criteria including blind judging, score normalization and cross matching, to reward only designers and organizations that truly deserve special recognition. The jury is composed of academics, professionals, enterprise and focus groups and follows strict guidelines to provide a fair and ethical evaluation. The judges selected PURELAB Chorus ahead of over a thousand other hopeful entries.

The gold award is only given to a design which is rated in the top 3% of submissions and one that helps people achieve more, by empowering them through added functionality, performance, reliability and interaction.

The Biggest Project in ELGA LabWater’s Seventy Five Year History
PURELAB Chorus is the first modular water purification system designed to fit individual laboratory applications, budgets and configurations. It delivers all grades of purified water and provides a scalable, flexible, customized solution, offering a selection of dispensing, storage and installation options. Modular elements can be positioned independently or combined to minimize footprint.

As the biggest product development project in ELGA's seventy five year history, PURELAB Chorus has rationalized the product range into just twelve modular elements, while improving user experience. The innovative modular chassis, with its requirement to load-bear high volumes of water and fit multiple components, needed extensive engineering design. Purification modules, dispensers and storage tanks required the development of a smart-link technology, allowing the system to work when elements are combined or positioned independently.

The visually iconic design elements, such as ambient communication via the Halo Dispensers, help to differentiate the ELGA units from those of competitors, while the use of greener purification technologies highlights a commitment to providing an environmentally friendly product that is cost effective to run.

A Design Driven by Customer Feedback
The inspiration for the design of PURELAB Chorus came from the increasing demand for flexibility in laboratories, many of which are required to undertake multiple applications while operating in a sustainable and cost effective manner. Existing high volume systems are based on fixed solutions and there was a clear opportunity for an adaptable system to meet changeable pure water requirements, fit individual laboratory spaces and give the customer freedom of choice.

By taking advantage of a modular approach, tanks, dispensers and even PURELAB Chorus itself can be wall mounted, placed on or under the laboratory bench, stacked or installed independently to save valuable laboratory space.

Feedback from laboratory staff was collected during an extensive research phase, which included physical testing, interviews, laboratory trending and studies of scientists at work. The requirements identified were better system communication, precise control over dispensing and improved internal access.

In response to the these needs, haptic touch control with variable flow rates was included to give users flexibility and the ability to control pure water dispensing, while the halo dispensers “glow” to clearly communicate the status of the system. Two central doors open to offer easy access and consumables can be removed quickly and easily using only one hand.

Clever Engineering
The PURELAB Chorus chassis has been carefully engineered to ensure standardization. Multiple cartridges, consumables, valves, pumps and filters can be fitted to produce a custom specification. Only ten additional screws are required to construct the entire product range.