Cold-Pumping a Soft Dewar...

Rich Shoemaker (rshoe@wwitch.unl.edu)
Wed, 30 Apr 1997 16:00:10 -0500

Pan HongJun wrote:
>
> Hi, Friend:
> Bob's experience brings a question to be discussed. When the helium
> hold time is down, what we can do about it? deenergize magnet to prevent
> from quenching damage?

Cold-Pump it!!!! It helps tremendously (for awhile). Just be careful
not to go home while the valve is open (in case of a
power-outage...ouch!).

The process generally involves bringing-in a turbo-pumping station, and
pumping down everything in front of the valve, leak-checking, and then
you open the valve, and pump on the thing for several hours.

I always lose a few pounds (water weight...sweating) until the procedure
is completed. The bad news is that sometimes the seals are going (or
have gone) bad, so this just buys one a little extra time before the
magnet has to be brought down, warmed-up, and re-sealed.

Best Regards,

Rich S.

-- 
Richard Shoemaker, Ph.D.                        Phone--(402) 472-6255
Instrumentation Director, Chemistry             FAX----         -6964
Research Associate Professor, Chemistry
University of Nebraska-Lincoln   
URL:  http://wwitch.unl.edu/nmrlab.html