Cold Plate Applications

PORTABLE MEDICINE COOLER

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Portable Medicine Cooler:

Portable medicine cooler needed for carrying emergency intravenous solutions, all components must be enclosed within the case. TECA designed a custom thermoelectric (peltier) based cold plate built into a Pelican™ Box.

portable medicine cooler portable medicine cooler box

 

TECA is developing this product for a new customer. We have taken a standard Pelican™ Box and configured a battery powered thermoelectric cooling system which is installed totally inside. This cooled box is for the purpose of transporting up to 4 liters of emergency intravenous solutions safely.

There are fitted compartments inside as well for transporting other necessary items for patient care. Since nothing is exposed or protruding from the box, our customer has ended up with a good looking and very rugged, functional thermoelectric product.

NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH

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Neuroscience Research:

neuroscience research

 

At a prominent U.S. university, neuroscience research team choose TECA’s economical AHP-270CP Cold Plate.

The customer reports: “We cool a fly to 8 deg Celsius, and also use vacuum to attach it to the device during a brain dissection procedure. Essentially, the cooling is anesthetizing the fly, making it possible to attach the fly to the dissecting chamber in a very precise manner, using a manipulator (also in the picture).” The AHP-270CP is a great solution because it is small, inexpensive and yet offers reliable and effective cooling on the bench top.

FLOW CHEMISTRY / OEM PRODUCT

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Flow chemistry/OEM products application:

flow chemistry, cascaded thermoelectric cold plate

A European company specializing in equipment for the continuous flow chemistry market required extreme temperatures for a new product. Integrating a customized version of TECA’s Liquid Cooled Cascaded Cold Plate made the customer’s product possible: they are able to reach temperatures from minus 70 °C to plus 80 °C.

The customer reports that their new continuous flow reactor allows for the use of flow chemistry in many applications, achieving quicker results safely and with better control.

TISSUE DISSECTION

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Tissue Dissection Application:

AHP-1200CAS used in tissue dissection

We used TECA’s AHP-1200CAS three stage cascaded thermoelectric cold plate system to facilitate dissection of frozen human postmortem brain slices for extraction of protein for Proteomics research. Because we were trying to select specific regions without damaging the rest of each small specimen, it was important for us to maintain the integrity of the specimen during dissection.

Working in a lab at normal room temperature, we found that a constant temperature of -18 °C was ideal for this work (-20 °C was too cold, and warmer than -18  °C made the tissue start to melt). It would have been impossible to maintain such a precise temperature outside of a Cryostat without the cold table. It was immensely easier to perform the dissection on the cold table, and of course also much easier to wipe down the cold table than to clean a Cryostat.

LIQUID CHILLER COLD PLATE CASCADE

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Liquid Chiller Cold Plate Cascade:

Here are pictures of the TLC-900 thermoelectric liquid chiller with LHP-150CP Peltier liquid cooled cold plate set up run in the lab. The “load” is a plate with 10 power resistors mounted to the top and a series of thermocouples measuring the surface of the LHP-150CP’s thermoelectric cold plate.

liquid chiller cold plate cascade liquid chiller

 

During the test the power to the resistors is increased in steps with enough time in between for the temperatures to stabilize. Plotting the data resulted in performance curves. The test was made with the load insulated and with the load simply covered.

Later on we used a TLC-900CAS, a version of the TLC-900 made specifically for running and controlling secondary cold plates like the LHP-150CP and ran some step, ramp and soak profiles.

BEVERAGE COOLER

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Beverage Cooler application:

beverage cooler system beverage cooler TE cooler

 

The beverage cooler application challenge was to keep concentrated beverage container located next to a hot water tank cool in a high volume OEM application. TECA has the flexibility and resources to manufacture custom OEM thermoelectric cooler (peltier coolers) assemblies intended for use as part of a customer machine, apparatus, or system. This OEM assembly is made by TECA in production runs in the thousands. It is not ours, so to protect the privacy and identity of our customers we can’t give too many details here.

This assembly is part of a beverage service product which is shipped worldwide by a well known consumer products company. TECA furnishes the cooling “engine” which refrigerates the beverage product to be dispensed, and the OEM builds finished machinery in their own plants.

STIRRING COLD PLATE

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Stirring Cold Plate:

A Peltier stirring cold plate was needed to cool liquid inside a standard 1000 ml plastic tank and maintain the class 100 clean room rating. They desired a custom designed thermoelectric stirring cold plate with integral variable stir speed control, temperature control, alarm and remote sense capability.

stirring cold plate stirring cold plate

TECA is glad to participate in custom and OEM product development. Over the years we have come up with some innovative and novel solutions for our customers. This product was developed from scratch for a start-up company in the field of pharmaceutical development. This TECA cold plate apparatus was designed and built for use in a clean room facility. The controls are ergonomic. The user can easily adjust controls for stir speed, timing and temperature even while wearing clean room garb and sterile gloves.

COOLING GAS FLOW

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Cooling Gas FLow:

A potential customer expressed interest in a cooling/heating system for an aerosol flow tube envisioning a 1 inch OD, 0.875 inch ID stainless steel flow tube mounted inside a 2-2.5 inch ID pipe (likely also stainless steel and insulated on the outside) capable of controlling the tube at temperatures ranging from roughly 5 °C to 40 °C at an ambient temperature of 25-30 °C.  We are measuring the change in particulates in the air due to the temp change.

cooling gas flow cooling gas flow

Standard liquid chillers were first offered along with technical design assistance. The requirements led to direct contact cooling as being a good solution. Standard cold plate products and controllers were offered which led to this request for a custom package. “We would like to have the flow tube sandwiched between the cold plates with the temperature controller and power supplies attached in a similar manner so that we only need attach the temperature controller (the TC-3400 appears as if it will work) to a computer so that we can change the set points remotely.

Is any of this even possible or am I dreaming in Technicolor?” We advised him that the best dreams were in color. Preliminary design work was done and a quote prepared. Shortly thereafter an order was received; design documents were completed and sent to production. Less than 3 months after the initial contact the product was shipped. Several months later a follow up was made with this response.

“Things are doing really well. It does exactly what we wanted it to do, and is much more efficient and better than we hoped for. We’re very happy!

COOLING FLUID FLOW

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Cooling Fluid Flow:

cooling fluid flow

A customer needed to cool high pressure flow of fluid in a single pass. Using expanded Aluminum foam and attaching it to the surface of AHP-301CP thermoelectric cold plate (peltier cold plate) provided a way to maximize the thermal contact surface and eliminated the need to complex fluid path and larger cold plate.

BEVERAGE COOLING IN A BARREL

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Beverage Cooling in a barrel:

beverage cooling in a barrel beverage cooling in a barrel

Here’s an application that TECA’s engineering team was particularly excited about. Not because of the economics or the potential new business. Frankly we didn’t think the market was there. But as soon as they found out that a ½ barrel of beer would be needed for testing they were all over it. While none was ever sold, good lessons regarding contact methods and material stratification were learned. To see the result of the test click here.
We used an AHP-1200CP thermoelectric cold plate and a TLC-700 thermoelectric liquid chiller for testing purpose.

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