Following my query regarding liquid helium recovery systems, I've had contact with a few MR labs that have installed recovery systems in the past few years, and spoken with several manufacturers, who were able to give me a general idea of the cost of installing and maintaining the systems.
In brief, the recovery systems consist of a network of piping and valves bringing regular boiloff and the higher boiloff generated during fills to a system of storage cylinders or bag. These can be at medium or high pressure, depending on the specific site needs. The compressed gas then passes through a purifier and is liquefied into a storage dewar. All this needs a mechanical room/space of modest size (depends on if you need a bag for gas storage). If all the plumbing is correctly designed and installed there should be no effect the quality of your data.
The cost of installing a helium recovery system is in the ballpark of 200-300K. This does NOT include the cost of connecting instruments to the plant: tubing/valves/installation (+/- 50K). All companies that I spoke with will help design the plumbing, but do not supply parts or install the lines running from your instrument(s) to the recovery system. Annual maintenance costs vary depending on the type of purification you require and whether or not the cold head(s) have moving parts or not. The maximum is about 15K/year: that would be on a system with 2 cold heads that need replacing about every 2.5 years. As recovery is not 100%, there is the need to purchase a small volume of liquid or gas to top things up periodically.
Planning and installing sounds like a fairly large time investment.. once the system is up and running there is regular maintenance required to keep the purifier working, and transferring and storing/using your liquid. Not vast amounts of extra work, but things that need to be kept on top of.
For the most part it sounds like large NMR facilities and physics labs that do a lot of field ramping absolutely benefit from recovering their helium.
For medium sized labs, if supply problems persist, and price keeps going up, it is probably worth educating yourself. Of course, there is also the question of space and funding, cooling requirements for compressors and ongoing additional electricity costs to consider.
There are some very nice videos and much more detailed descriptions out there than I can supply. Some of the manufacturers will be at the ENC- a good place to find out more detail about their specific setups. And I'm sure people that are recovering their helium too. Wish I could make it!
Hope this helps those of you, who like me, have been looking at your ballooning helium bills and wondering if there is an alternative...
Tara
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Dr. Tara Sprules
QANUC
Quebec/Eastern Canada High Field NMR Facility
www.nmrlab.mcgill.ca
phone: (514) 398-1721
fax: (514) 398-8254
3420 University St., Rm 023
McGill University
Montreal, QC, H3A 2A7
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Received on Fri Feb 01 2019 - 10:03:09 MST