Cold Plate Applications

PHARMACEUTICAL LABORATORY

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Pharmaceutical Laboratory:

Keeping drugs cool on the bench

pharmaceutical laboratory

A private biopharmaceutical company formulates drugs that are sensitive to temperature. TECA Model AHP-1200 CPV is their perfect benchtop cooling solution. The customer uses the AHP-1200 CPV Cold Plate in combination with the customer’s own aluminum blocks to keep solutions at 0C during filtration and vial filling operations.

The customer reports, “We have been very satisfied”. This customer provided photo is a wonderful example of the versatility of TECA’s line of Laboratory Cold/Hot Plates. The plate surfaces are appropriately sized to accept microtiter plates and other lab accessories. The temperature can be read from either the plate surface or anywhere a remote sensor can be placed, via the Remote Sensibility™ feature.

LABORATORY APPLICATION

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Laboratory Application:

laboratory application laboratory application

 

In March our customer said: “We are most likely going to soon order 1 of the AHP-301CPV.”

First though, can you please provide a quote on the manufacture of a top plate? We would like to fit:

  • 2 x 500 mL Schott bottles (the one I measured was 86mm diameter)
  • 2 x 250 mL Schott bottles (the one I measured was 68mm diameter)
  • 2 x 50 mL Schott bottles (the one I measured was 46mm diameter)

I’d guess that Schott do not make their bottles to too tight specifications, so we would need to allow some room for tolerances. What do you think? These could be arranged in any way that fit best and that minimized any top plate overhang over the cold plate beneath. We can foresee out-growing the 50 mL bottles, so ideally would like the ‘walls’ surrounding the 50 mL wells to be thick enough to later be drilled out so that the wells can accommodate 100 mL Schott bottles (the one I measured was 56mm diameter). The height of the top plate (i.e. depth of the wells) only need be about 70 mm. For the current application, we only need to chill to about 5 deg °C. Does the range we are interested in affect anything?

In May we shipped the custom “Beaker Block: and AHP-301CPV.

COOLING WAFER

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Cooling Wafer:

AHP-1200CP cold plate
AHP-1200CP cold plate with adjustable feet

The adjustable feet on this AHP-1200CP Peltier cooling plate (thermoelectric cooling plate) made life easier on the factory floor.

Customer wafers needed cooling at the end of processing and the feet brought the cold plate up to the perfect height to match the production mechanisms. Just a little option that TECA is ready to provide to make the products we build work for you.

INDUSTRIAL MATERIAL

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Industrial Material:

industrial material

In this example of an AHP-1200CP application a box surrounds the cold plate area. Materials are set directly upon the cold plate and the lid is closed. The material is cooled and temperature controlled without the large air cooling refrigerator.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL

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Environmental Control:

environmental control

A municipal waste plant had an emergency requirement for a water drop device (to condense moisture for analysis) to be installed in a smokestack. In this time critical application TECA responded with a custom designed variation of the AHP-150CP thermoelectric cold plate, to be mounted high up in the stack. Working with the customer TECA was able to design and deliver the product in less than two weeks, more than meeting the customer’s timetable.

NeoGraft FUE HAIR TRANSPLANT

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NeoGraft FUE Hair Transplant:

NeoGraft FUE Hair Transplant NeoGraft FUE Hair Transplant

 

Our customer calls the ICE-160 Electric Ice Trays a “dramatic improvement”. He uses several in his medical practice.

From our customer: “We use the ICE-160 during the quality-control and graft-storage portion of our minimally-invasive hair transplant procedures. While hair transplant grafts are outside of the body, they are fragile and susceptible to damage from dehydration and other factors as they are separated from their blood supply. During this delicate phase of the hair transplant, the harvested follicular unit micrografts are now in a special physiologic holding solution at 4 °C using the thermoelectric ICE-160 before and after being counted and sorted and while they are awaiting implantation. This is a dramatic improvement over the use of traditional graft coolers using frozen water which need to be swapped out often during a long NeoGraft FUE hair transplant procedure.

We are confident that this method of graft storage ensures maximum graft viability and helps us maintain exceptional results for our hair transplant patients. The solid metal surface is simple to clean and disinfect after each procedure. Thank you for this great addition to our practice!”

HAIR REPLACEMENT PROCEDURE

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 Hair Transplant Procedure, Follicular Unit Transplant/Extraction (FUT/FUE):

hair transplant procedure

A group of physicians pioneered a hair replacement procedure using TECA’s AHP-1200CPV Cold/Hot Plate. The AHP-1200CPV is a Peltier cold plate. In the photo provided by TECA’s customer, the cold plate keeps hair transplant grafts cool in a solution during the patient’s procedure. The convenience of the AHP-1200CPV cold plate’s built-in temperature controller allows the technician to easily program it to maintain the desired set point.

The AHP-1200CPV is capable of reaching temperatures as low as -15 °C. In the photos here, the set point is programmed to 5 °C. The AHP-1200CPV has an integral universal power supply, so it can be used with any input voltage range from 100 to 240 VAC.

 

ELECTRONIC TEST STATION

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Electronic Test Station:

electronic test station

An aerospace contractor was interested in a large cold plate for the testing of electronic components.  We first offered them the AHP-1200CPV but they responded that the AHP-1200DCP was more the size they wanted.  Could we change it to a single plate?  Well, we couldn’t change the plate size but we could add an accessory plate which was larger.  And we could build the unit with one controller including all of the standard options.

Now they are using the 12” x 18” custom accessory plate and a special AHP-1200DCP to test electronic amplifiers by ramping the temperature up and down between +10 °C to +70 °C.  A custom solution at very nearly standard product price to fill a not so unusual need.

COOLING 64 DEGREES BELOW THE AMBIENT

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Cooling 64 Degrees Below The Ambient:

cooling 64 degrees below the ambient cooling 64 degrees below the ambient

 

A medical device manufacturer uses a TECA Low-Temperature Cascade System in his design process. The Cascade System consists of a TECA Cold Plate and Cascade attachment. The system offers direct contact cooling to the customer’s load.

In this example, the customer was able to cool his load of Isopropyl Alcohol solution from +25 °C to -25 °C in about 35 minutes. Cooling to such low temperatures allowed the customer to package his very small , invasive medical device.

We received the following feedback from the customer: “I was eventually able to get it down to -38 °C at an ambient temperature of 26 °C. It beats the heck out of the system that is currently being used…This thing is working beautifully. Everyone is most impressed. Thanks!!!”

MEASURING PLANT METABOLISM

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Measuring Plant Metabolism:

measuring plant metabolism plant metabolism measuring plant metabolism

 

A university-based agriculture research laboratory in Spain is measuring plant metabolism under various conditions. TECA Corporation’s high-capacity version of the AHP-1200CPV (please refer to part number 9-35KB-1-0A0 on our product specification sheet) is used to cool the plant to 22 °C. Precise temperature control is important in this application as the plant’s roots must not get too cold.

There is a significant heat load to deal with as well: the plant is being illuminated with LED lights. Finally, thermal contact is an issue. The plant is inside a glass container, which is inside an aluminum block, which is placed on the AHP-1200CPV Cold Plate surface. Working closely with TECA engineers, the customer was successfully able to integrate the AHP-1200CPV Cold Plate into this unique experiment design and his sensitive thermal management needs were met.

The customer shared with us: “Your suggestion to add water between the glass and the aluminum block is a good one. It does lower the temperature inside, probably by increasing the thermal contact. The fit between the block and the glass is pretty tight. The glass was made first and then the block was drilled out using the glass as a reference. Still, even a tiny space basically ruins the heat transfer, so adding the water seems to fix that. Thanks for your help and suggestions, they were quite useful.”

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