Hi AMMRL Community.
At ENC we discussed surveying the community to see what people are doing to
recycle helium in their facilities, with the aim of putting together a general
"best practices" document. There have been many helpful discussion on AMMRL
concerning specific recycling questions, but with interest escalated due to
the current helium availability crisis, it would be productive to develop a
more comprehensive resource. Let’s start with this survey.
If you have a helium recovery/recycling system, please respond and describe
your systems and operations, preferably using the questions below as a guide.
If you have chosen to NOT install such a system, it would be helpful for
you to respond by describing the most significant barriers to adoption in
your circumstances.
Helium recycling is a multifaceted endeavor, including aspects of hardware,
infrastructure, space planning, financing, staffing, and more. It is clear
that no single solution is appropriate for every site, so it will be very
informative to hear how different labs have developed solutions that have
worked in their own circumstances (or, importantly, did NOT work well). It
would be especially interesting to hear from facilities that are working
across significant distances or with other institutions (i.e., the
"hub-and-spoke" recycling model). If there's anything you found important
that is not covered by these questions, please share your knowledge at the
end of your response.
My personal interest is aimed at gaining insights to help our campus develop
a recycling solution. We haven’t had one before, and we found we needed to
learn a lot just to get oriented, and we’re still determining whether
installation is feasible. One intent of this project is to develop a quick
orientation guide for other people new to thinking about the issue in practical
terms.
Thanks for your help!
* Josh
HELIUM RECYLCING SURVEY
1. If you have a website describing your recovery system, please provide
a link.
MECHANICS
1. Please describe your recovery network. How many magnets? Are any of
them pumped? Does your network include non-NMR systems? Does it span different
floors/buildings/blocks?
2. Scale: How much liquid helium did you use annually before installing
your recovery system, and how much now? Also, please estimate the overall
percentage of helium you recover.
3. Do you liquefy your helium yourself, or do you transport recovered helium
to a vendor or other partner for processing into liquid (i.e., the "hub-and-spoke"
model)?
4. Do you recover the extra helium evolved during magnet fills? If so, please
describe special equipment and practices you use to make this work safely.
5. Please describe your equipment, including the major components and their
manufacturers. Was it easy to configure for NMR systems? Was your vendor knowledgeable
about supporting NMR needs? Did you require equipment not supplied by this vendor?
6. Please describe your recovery line and how your magnets are connected
to it. What materials are used? What size pipe do you use? Does your line include
one-way valves, pressure regulators, or other equipment? How do you check for
helium leaks?
7. Please describe where your pieces of equipment are located and whether
this was determined in part by access to special infrastructure like house chilled water or three-phase power. Is it all in a utility room or in the
spectrometer room? Different places?
8. Please describe your portable dewar(s). Is it equipped with a pressur e-building
heater? How do you determine when your dewar is full? Do you have a scale for weighing it?
OPERATIONS
1. Please describe the time and effort associated with operating and maintaining
your system. Do you have any best practices to share? How many people are involved,
and are they NMR staff?
2. If you are comfortable discussing the topic, how was purchase funded?
Institutional funds? Government grant? Other? Did support for different aspects of
the project come from different sources?
3. Please describe how you pay for ongoing expenses like maintenance contracts,
staff time, consumables, etc. Did you increase recharge rates to pay for them? Are
your costs offset by savings due to reduced helium consumption?
4. Was the cost of infrastructure improvements a major barrier to acquiring a
recovery system? Were you able to use grant money to make infrastructure improvements
like installing pipes?
5. Has your helium vendor treated you differently since you began recycling helium?
Have you lost "preferred customer" status?
ANYTHING ELSE?
1. What other things do you wish you had known before getting this system? What mistakes
would you caution your colleagues to avoid? Please provide your best additional advice to
people seeking a new helium recovery system.
Josh Kurutz, PhD
NMR Facility Manager, Chemistry Dept.
https://voices.uchicago.edu/chemnmr/
jkurutz_at_uchicago.edu
Received on Wed Jun 15 2022 - 04:19:48 MST