Paper CS-ThM10
Building a Case for the Future: Design and Construction of an Encasement and Monitoring System to Protect the US Bill of Rights for the Next 100 Years
Thursday, November 13, 2014, 11:00 am, Room 313
NIST has been working to revolutionize the way we monitor and protect our historical documents by designing and constructing the next generation of document encasement. While the encasement “operates” at atmospheric pressure, to protect important documents it must perform like an ultra-high vacuum (UHV) system in terms of purity requirements, outgassing rate, permeation and leak rates. It has long been known that documents degrade overtime, but archivists and historians have been working to slow this process down through limiting exposure to damaging agents (oxygen, dust, excess humidity, mold, etc.) while still allowing visibility of the document for the public. NIST’s design is innovative due to its ability to seal the document in a humidified Argon environment using a custom designed chamber with a double o-ring seal to reduce oxygen permeation through the second viton o-ring seal. This system required several innovative solutions to reduce differential pressure on the display glass and to improve and leak test the o-ring sealing. The Encasement also features a custom designed sensor suite to monitor the status of the internal environment. The NIST design monitors and wirelessly transmits differential pressure, barometric pressure, temperature, humidity, oxygen content, and GPS location. All of the sensors were designed to be vacuum compatible with metal seals to ensure integrity of the encasement. The talk will feature discussions on oxygen permeation rates and measurement along with monitoring sensor performance.