TECA Gives Back

Donation of Recirculating Liquid Chiller:

TECA is pleased to be a part of an educational exhibit in a science museum.

TECA donated a TLC-700, our most popular model of Recirculating Liquid Chiller to the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI). The TLC-700 is part of the “Search for Life” exhibition. Specifically, it cools Mars and The North Pole in an exhibit exploring how Earth’s denser atmosphere holds heat better than Mars’s thin atmosphere.

 

 

 

Special Note: The NYSCI has been temporarily closed since September 1, 2021 due to hurricane damage. Learn More

ANODIZING ALUMINUM

Anodizing Aluminum:

anodizing aluminum
A technological university in Asia chose TECA’ s thermoelectric cooling Model AHP-800MSP Magnetic Stirring Cold/Hot Plate to anodize aluminum. The researcher’s process required a temperature of 10 °C.

The AHP-800MSP‘s universal input voltage feature (100-240 VAC) allows it to be used anywhere, making it a perfect, off the shelf choice for our customer in Asia. He wrote to us: “It is quite good. Also the manual is quite clear and quite user-friendly. Thank you.”
Unique to this product is the adjustable nature of many of its features: stir-bar speed, fan speed (for noise reduction), temperature sensing (internal or external) and more.

The AHP-800MSP can even accept beakers of various size by adding optional sleeves. The solid-state thermoelectric construction is low-maintenance. There are no filters to change and no moving parts except for the fans. Our products use robust thermoelectric modules and boast a long service life.

AEROSPACE MANUFACTURING

Aerospace Manufacturing:

liquid chiller for aerospace manufacturing application

 

To meet an Aerospace manufacturing customer requirement TECA sales and engineering team modified a standard model chiller to meet a highly specialized demand of the application, including liquid cooling, 24 VDC input and wall mounting. This recirculating liquid chiller was developed for a customer who needed something similar to the TECA LHP-300CP chiller; but it had to be a liquid cooled liquid chiller – it had to be 24 VDC input – and it had to be mounted on the wall!

The application is X-Ray inspection of aircraft engine parts. Temperature controlled water is circulated through a heat exchanger which is keeping photo diodes nice and cool, assuring quality X-Ray imaging.

CUSTOM MILITARY LIQUID CHILLER

Military Liquid chiller:

Here’s another custom military application by TECA.

Military grade liquid chiller

 

The United State Navy needed a liquid chiller to circulate coolant and also meet strict military requirements. TECA developed a custom thermoelectric liquid chiller using MIL rated components. This is a liquid chiller for circulating chilled coolant as part of a tracking system on a NAVY ship.

Note that the chilled liquid circuit is effectively “sandwiched“ between two heat sinks with rugged Mil 901 fans. Wiring and electrics are housed in a NEMA-4X/Harsh Environment enclosure with an O-ring gasket seal. This unit is rated for shipboard use in salt-spray, shock and vibration.

BEVERAGE COOLING

Beverage cooling:

beverage cooling with TLC-700 thermoelectric liquid chiller adn water pad

Here’s more of the engineers dream test job (beverage cooling). The team was messing around and decided to cool a keg with a TLC-700 liquid chiller and one of our medical customers water pads used for patient temperature therapy. Instead of the patient laying down on the pad they wrapped it around the keg and then insulated it.

Not quite an economical way of cooling your beer. But they did use the mattress the next day to sleep off the hangovers.

CALIBRATION

Calibration:

calibration using TLC-1200HC liquid chiller calibration with liquid chiller

 

A commercial laboratory uses TECA Chiller TLC-1200HC to discourage temperature gradients in a calibration system. Utilizing the built in temperature controller, the customer was able to successfully run the input and output to a temperature difference of zero. Designing a suitable calibration method was critical to the customer’s ability to release a new product to market.

The photos here illustrate the compact size of TECA’s TLC-1200HC.

LIQUID CHILLER COLD PLATE CASCADE

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.

SEMICONDUCTORS

Cooling Semiconductors:

semiconductors

 

A research oriented organization uses TECA’s TLC-900 recirculating liquid chiller to control the temperature of a semiconductors test stage where proximity of TEC would produce electromagnetic noise hard to screen.

Temperature controlled fluid supplied by TLC-900 keeps their test stage cooled and free of noise.

TESTING PROPERTIES OF MATERIALS

Testing Material Properties:

testing material properties

A materials scientist at a state university uses TECA’s TLC-900 Liquid Chiller to cool transducers for an elastic modulus apparatus. The apparatus measures the elastic modulus as function of temperature. The elastic modulus is a material property. It defines the stiffness of material. It varies with temperature and is used in design.

The customer uses the TLC-900 Liquid Chiller to cool a plate, which then cools from 400C to between 30C and 50C.

COOLING GAS FLOW

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!

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