Valued medical or scientific assets that might form the cornerstone of your lab operations are frequently protected in a laboratory upright Freezers. With such a crucial role, the laboratory freezer you select must be dependable, have precise temperature control, and be the ideal model for your lab’s demands. There are various types of laboratory freezers, divided by temperature and configuration.
Temperature
General purpose laboratory freezers have pre-set temperatures between -20 and -30 degrees Celsius, low-temp freezers have pre-set temperatures between -30 and -45 degrees Celsius, and ultra-low temperature freezers have pre-set temperatures between -45 and -86 degrees Celsius. It’s crucial to match the freezers you’re contemplating with your temperature requirements because all pre-set temperatures are adjustable, but only within a limited range.
Configuration
There are two popular layouts for lab freezers: upright and chest. Free-standing and undercounter uprights are further separated into these categories.
Standing Freezers
The advantage of upright freezers is that they are simpler to arrange. Typically, upright freezers feature more shelves, allowing you to transfer products without taking away any of the ones that may be on top.Larger uprights generally feature more storage inside the door, giving you more options for storing commonly used items for easy access.Because they may be positioned out of the way close to the work station that uses them, undercounter upright freezers are especially useful for storing smaller products you require regular access to.Temperature management is an upright freezer’s drawback. Frozen air tries to flow out of an upright freezer when you open it. It may be challenging to maintain the optimum temperature because of the sudden drop in temperature. The effect will be more noticeable the more times you have to open the door to perform lab tasks.
Inner compartment doors are something to think about when selecting an upright lab freezer. Inner compartment doors provide you the ability to more precisely manage the temperature for those goods they protect, especially for materials that are sensitive to temperature. While the materials behind the inner compartment doors remain constant or close to constant in temperature, the temperature in the remaining portion of the compartment may vary substantially with each opening and closing of the main door.some freezers also have the capacity to swiftly and automatically adjust the temperature each time the door is opened. This can compensate for the absence of internal compartments and give you greater organisational flexibility.
Chimney Freezers
Due to the necessity of layering items on top of one another, chest freezers are more challenging to organise. You need to take something out of the top in order to reach the bottom objects.Chest freezers have the benefit of holding larger material containers than upright freezers. The finest equipment for bulk or longer-term material storage is a chest freezer.When you open a chest freezer’s lid from the top, the icy air tends to stay inside the container rather than leaking out, making temperature management considerably simpler.
Freezer/Refrigerator Combined
Instead of taking up space for two separate units if you need both a refrigerator and a freezer, you may purchase a combo unit that has a separate freezer and refrigerator. They can have distinct alarms and sensors, and they have separate doors for each function. Freezer also have separate temperature controls. They might be perfect for labs with limited space.Other factors must be taken into account while selecting a laboratory freezer.
Size
How large of a freezer is required? That is a significant query that only you can respond to.How much room can you set aside for the freezer? No matter how big a chest freezer you desire, if you don’t have enough room, it won’t help. Remember that uprights let you store more items in a space that’s smaller.Are you keeping big containers for a long time? The solution might be a big chest freezer.Is material organisation crucial for minimising lab errors? The best option would be an upright.Do you need to have access to the items in the freezer frequently? Selecting a tiny or undercounter type that you can put close to your workspace is definitely a good idea.Your circumstance may require more than one freezer to meet your needs, according to a review of the facts.
Location
Consider the freezer’s requirements before moving it to a new site if you’re intending to install a new freezer. First, warmer rooms don’t work as well for freezers. It shortens the usable life of their compressors and makes them work harder.Additionally, freezers function better when there is space on both sides to improve air circulation. They risk overheating and failure if they are placed next to another piece of equipment or against a wall.Finally, freezers generate heat on their own, raising the ambient temperature and taxing the compressor. Avoid crowding the space with too many freezers to prevent the room’s temperature from rising too much and affecting the efficiency of all the freezers.
Temperature regulation
To ensure the survival of many laboratory materials or specimens, specific temperatures must be maintained. In light of this, be careful to select a model with exact temperature control if you require that level of control.In comparison to older manual, dial-type, or analogue devices, many contemporary models incorporate microprocessor-controlled thermostats that are significantly more accurate and even offer temperature adjustments accurate to one decimal point.
Alarms
No matter how dependable or high-quality your freezer is, there is always a chance of an unforeseen, disastrous failure. In light of this, a built-in alarm system is essential if you store important goods that you can’t afford to lose. When temperatures exceed thresholds, some systems include remote alerts that can also notify you via email, text, phone, or pager in addition to sounding an audible alarm.
Sensors for Temperature
For the purpose of validation, some disciplines, such as medicine, biology, and food and drug testing, demand meticulous temperature documentation. There are sensors that can be utilised to gather data that can be used to verify the material and air temperatures as needed. Data can be kept and retrieved as necessary, either locally or remotely.
Automatic Defrost
Ice can accumulate on the internal walls of manual defrost devices and needs to be removed from time to time. As a result, things in the freezer will need to be removed and temporarily stored somewhere else during the process. It will also take some time for the freezer to cool down enough to accept the items once they have been removed.
Integrated Defrost
A lot of auto-defrost lab freezers use heat to defrost condenser coils, which raises the temperature within the freezer when the freezer is in use. Heat and air circulation melt any ice that may have formed on the unit’s walls, but if this circumstance is not planned for, it could endanger the goods inside the freezer.However, ice packs can be utilised to aid. Often, simply keeping the unit filled is enough to avoid a significant shift in temperature. You simply need to be aware of how the auto-defrost cycle may affect the items in the freezer. Modern units have the capacity to abbreviate defrost cycles and can be set to do so when temperatures exceed a certain threshold. The risk to lab materials is decreased by using shorter automatic defrost cycles. The energy efficiency of automatic defrost systems is higher than that of manual defrost units.
Security
Your industry can want anything from locks on freezer doors to a record of when and by whom each freezer door was opened. Many freezer models come with basic locking doors, but if you want more complex systems, you’ll need to choose more expensive or even custom models.
Material Transparency
Being able to see what is accessible can be the simplest kind of inventory management or physical security. It might be as straightforward as an insulated glass door in the case of a freezer. Basic upright freezers have solid doors that frequently have shelves or bins for storage. Models without the additional storage in the door are more expensive and have insulated glass doors instead.
Reversible upright freezer doors
Nowadays, it’s typical for single-door standup lab freezers to have reversible doors to increase the freezer’s flexibility when it comes to where it can be placed in your lab. Make sure to ensure that the freezer you are contemplating has a reversible door if that is a feature you might need.
Material Development
Both the interior and outside of freezers are made of coated or stainless steel. While coated steel surfaces are susceptible to corrosion when damaged, stainless steel is resistant to stains and rust. In addition to being more attractive, stainless steel is a more robust material that can extend the life of your freezer and make it easier to clean.
Safety
In the wrong setting, any unprotected electric equipment could be dangerous. In the presence of an oxygen-rich environment or flammable substances, sparks from loose wires, short circuits, and blown lights might result in a fire or explosion. There are devices that are built to be explosion-proof if that is a problem. I genuinely hope that this post has given you useful knowledge that aids in the selection of the ideal laboratory freezer for your requirements.
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