thermoelectric cold plate

CHEMICAL WASTE TRANSPORT

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Chemical Waste Transport:

chemical waste transport

Here’s an application that our engineering crew would love to put into greater use if they could figure out where and how. A specialty gas company called. They wanted to transfer toxic and corrosive liquids from big to small containers for lab use. The process had been taking several minutes with too much wasted product.

They knew because of the conditions a natural head pressure in the big container that they could use a cold plate to cool at the receiving vessel (Ø 1.5″ x 12″ bottle) to create a driving force which moves the fluid.

We didn’t go into the physics of this, we trusted what the customer said and worked with them. When they tried an AHP-1200CP it was fantastic. It turned 4 minutes and a lot of waste into no waste and 40 seconds.

SAMPLE COOLING IN CLEAN ROOM

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Sample Cooling (Clean Room):

Sample Cooling Clean Room Sample Cooling Clean Room

 

A research lab in Europe needed to stabilize the temperature of an acid solution within +-0.5 °C. TECA’s AHP-301CPV Cold/Hot Plate was the ideal solution due to its small footprint, versatile features and programmable temperature controller. The customer offered the following comments:

  • The AHP-301CPV is installed in our big clean room*. Here we fabricate our micro/nano devices for electronic and photonic applications.
  • we have now the possibility to do experiments at controlled temperatures and in a really wide range of temperatures. This allow us to increase the reproducibility of our results, which often are so dependent by Temperature.
  • AHP-301CPV keeps stable the temperature of an acid solution inside a beaker (max 6 or 7cm in diameter and max 10cm in height).
  • The possibility to program the temperature controller it’s really interesting, and it will be worthwhile for future experiments. (The customer is referring to the ability to program ramp & soak profiles)

TECA’s cold/hot plates are not specifically designed for clean room use however the customer determined this product would be suitable given the restrictions in this particular clean room.

COOLING SAMPLES TO -40 °C Research Study

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Cooling Samples to -40 °C

Cooling Samples to -40 °C Cooling Samples to -40 °C

 

A university research team utilized TECA’s AHP-1200C31 Cascaded Cold Plate to build a calorimeter for a research paper that was recently published. The researchers aimed to determine the thermal properties of their specimen as part of a study on cement and concrete durability.

Originally the customer used only the AHP-1200CAS base cold plate and was able to reach -15 °C. When he determined that colder temperatures were needed, he added the CCP-31 cascade attachment to reach -40 °C. With a cascade system each cascade stage acts as a heat sink for the stage above it. This allows the top stage to reach colder temperatures.

TECA offers two and three stage cascade systems for reaching temperatures as low as -60 °C (LHP-1200C31).

MEDICAL LABORATORY

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Medical Laboratory:

medical laboratory

Some researchers at Johns Hopkins have taken the AHP-1200CPV thermoelectric cold plate (Peltier cold plate) and are cooling protein crystallization in Teflon trays with a solution in them. They’ve used the remote sense feature by drilling a hole in Teflon tray and installing the sensor in there. Using it with internal sensor and the auto-tuning feature they have gotten the control they needed. The secret may have been in how well the Teflon tray is contacting the 2″ X 3″ plate, machined perfectly flat.

Cooling objects with concave bottoms minimizes the contact area and diminishes the cooling effectiveness.

MEDICATION STORAGE

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Medication Storage:

medication storage medication storage

 

Keeping medication at optimal storage temperature is very important.

A customized AHP-1200CPV thermoelectric cold plate (Peltier cooling plate) with plate that has grooves with various diameters to accommodate vials of different sizes and lengths was a perfect solution for the customer. Another feature of this custom thermoelectric cooling unit (Peltier cold plate) is tamper proof temperature controller.

MASS SPECTROMETER LABORATORY

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Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometer Laboratory:

MASS SPECTROMETER LABORATORY MASS SPECTROMETER LABORATORY

 

Stock thermostated sample tray supplied with mass spectrometer holds water samples at above ambient temperature. This leads to evaporation and condensation within the sample vials, and problems of gas transfer through sample needle to mass spectrometer (liquid condensation blocks gas flow through capillary tube).

USF Geology Stable Isotope Laboratory installed a second auto-sampler with a TECA AHP-1200CPV cold plate to keep samples at precisely controlled temperatures to prevent condensation and evaporation of the sample within the vials, and maintains the thermal stability required for isotope ratio mass spectrometry of water samples analyzed by equilibration method.

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!”

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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