We haven't done this, but have also been considering it. The main problem I
see is the obvious one of avoiding the transmission of vibration to the
spectrometer. I haven't seen one of these things in the flesh, but it is a
refrigerator and all the refrigerators I've seen vibrate to some degree.
Any kind of hard connection is going to transmit this vibration to the
probe. We use ice and water or dry ice isopropanol to cool the heat
exchanger coil on our Varian machines; and, in those cases where we must
use LN2, we use a simple mechanism to automaticly refill the heat exchanger
bucket from a 160 liter LN2 dewar so that long runs can be done with
minimum operator attention. You can consume about 10,000 liters of LN2 for
the cost of one of these refrigerators, and that doesn't consider any
maintenance that may be needed. Thus, we have abandoned the FTS solution
for the time being.
I too would be interested to hear of any direct experiences with this device.
Charlie
Charles L. Mayne
University of Utah
Dept. of Chemistry
Voice: (801)581-7413
FAX: (801)581-4763 or 8433
E-mail: mayne@chemistry.utah.edu