Re: wet vt air
Barry Schweitzer (barry@sneezy.fhis.net)
Fri, 24 Jan 1997 09:35:30 -0500
On Jan 23, 4:29pm, Jim Breeyear wrote:
> Subject: Re: wet vt air
> John Chung wrote:
> >
> > howdy
> >
> > it's raining on the west coast, but i'm more concerned today about
> > a sudden icing up of vt air chillers on our spectrometers, most
> > likely caused by our compressed air being wet.
> >
> > i need some help/input into figuring out what to do about it.
> >
> > three separate machines using Bruker's new BCU05 seem to be icing up
> > when the chiller is on, and the vt heater current shuts off because
> > the air flow meter goes to zero flow. turning off the chiller and
> > cranking up the air pressure for 15-30 minutes seem to break the ice
> > in the line and flow is reestablished, but the problem has been
> > repeating itself since the last weekend some time.
> > one other machine with an older immersion cooler seems to be having
> > vt air pressure fluctutions (as seen by the ball flow meter on
> > bruker's vtu2000), but two other magnets with older chillers do
> > not seem to be having any problems with temperature control, no
> > icing up....
> >
> > we're in a brand new building with Hankison air dryers (which seemed
> > like overkill for the job and had shown no signs of malfunction so
> > far), and the two moisture indicators in the line in the compressor
> > room right before transfer into the magnet room are indicating
> > all thing are normal. since august these have performed w/o any
> > problem.
> >
> > in another room with one more spectrometer which has its own
> > balston dryer, there seems to be no problem (although this one
> > is fed through an extra nitrogen generator which further takes
> > water out of the line, most likely)
> >
> > since all signs seem normal and i'm not sure how to proceed,
> > I'D LIKE TO KNOW IF ANYONE OUT THERE HAS A WAY OF "QUANTIFYING"
> > THE AMOUNT OF MOISTURE IN YOUR COMPRESSED AIR.
> > and by this i mean something i can rig up myself and not go
> > and buy a fancy measuring device which for one would take too
> > long...
> >
> > or if any of you have any suggestion on what to do other than
> > running all vt off our nitrogen generators (which i have done for
> > two of the machines for now), since the nitrogen generator itself
> > is fed the same air and is probably not as dry as we'd like
> > if indeed the inlet air is wet.
> >
> > thanks for your help.
> >
> > John Chung
> >
> > *************************************************************
> > Manager, NMR Laboratories (619)784-7453 (Office)
> > Dept. of Molecular Biology, MB2 784-7455 (Lab)
> > The Scripps Research Institute 784-9822 (Fax)
> > 10666 N. Torrey Pines Rd. email: chung@scripps.edu
> > La Jolla, CA 92037 http://www.scripps.edu/~chung
> > *************************************************************
Hi John:
Coming to you from the land of 100% humidity for more than 6 months each
year. We had major problems like this even with a Balston air dryer.
We ended up putting a relatively inexpensive refrigerated dryer (SpeedAire)
in between the compressor and the Balston, and we haven't had any
further problems.
Hope this helps!
Barry
--
Barry Schweitzer, Ph.D.
Director
Division of Molecular & Structural Biology
Walt Disney Memorial Cancer Institute
at Florida Hospital
12722 Research Parkway
Orlando, FL 32826
Phone: (407) 380-9977
FAX: (407) 380-9978
email: barry@sneezy.fhis.net