Hi,
@Griffin.Labs you think heat transfer fluid expanding in the jacket caused this?
@Bottomshelfbastard you care to chime in on how this was chilled?
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This seems the most likely to me, it wouldn’t be strange for one of the chillers to have cycled during a power outage overnight. A pressure relief valve seems like a good idea about now.
Yeah, as stated the jacketed column is in line with the solvent tank on a poly sci chiller filled with Nu-Therm that hovers around -18C. I’m wondering if it cycled during a power outage one night and came up to temp which increased pressure resulting in this. I’m wondering the pressure curve for Nu-Therm now.
I can’t say for sure but if the fluid got really cold and then warmed back up without anywhere to go it definitely could do that easily. It takes a lot less force to implode a column as opposed to exploding.
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Am I wrong in thinking that’s something that should have been defeated during engineering? You’d think they’d plan for that variance in pressure during design and testing. Though, I’m not an engineer or a manufacturer so… 
yeah, most likely, Ive heard of water getting in the chiller fluid and creating an ice blockage or in the case i saw there was a valved manifold that was either closed due to operator error or failed due to improper installation. This is the inside of the 6"x24" imploded column
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Holy balls!
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Hi,
it would probably have blown the lines off the chiller first no?
Either the imput or output?
With ln2 it seems believable.
@Bottomshelfbastard any damage to the chiller or lines?
No damage at all @Soxhlet Nor have I had any issue with the chiller since.
@Griffin.Labs what was the chilling fluid you were running in the jacket when you experienced your implosion?
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Sorry im not sure if i understand what you are asking, but if the fluid can get to the chiller it wont happen. Something like this will only happen if there is a blockage that stops it and the fluid can’t escape the column and complete the loop. As long as the loop is open there would be no problems.
sorry for not being able to explain it very well, in the case of my picture it had a manifold of valves that were closed off not letting the fluid reach the chiller on either side so all the pressure from fluid expansion imploded the column.
The water/ice is just a theory, not sure if something like that could or has ever happened but the thought was it might be able to block the fluids escape right where the input/output of the column jackets are where it gets small. The problem would arise only if super chilled fluid is stuck somewhere while getting back to room temp. so it would need to be blocked from both sides of the chiller, the more i think about it the more unlikely it sounds but just wanted to throw it out there.
EDIT: the chilling fluid was julabos thermal fluid,
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Having the valves shut would probably do it, what is the coefficient of expansion for the heat transfer fluid you were using?
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I’m positive there isn’t water freezing in the lines. There might be backflow prevention but it should still be able to flow forward with the buildup of pressure. I’d think it would want to escape in line with the flow cycle, so forward into the chiller body.
Looks like the ones ive seen, that’ll make you pucker
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As long as you don’t have anything blocking the loop then the thermal fluid didn’t do it, I just wanted to throw out what I saw just in case you had something similar, and to help people from not making the same mistake.
Basically if you have chilled fluid and block it off while its warming up the pressure has to go somewhere. Unfortunately something like that wasn’t as completely obvious as it should of been at the time.
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I feel you man, thank you for sharing your experiences with this! Definitely investigating this possibility.
I had a shitty situation happen a long time ago with an oven from BVV, turned into a damn brick less than a year after purchase, the generation before they added metal hoses on the insides, along with warranties.
They wouldn’t help me out at all unfortunately, looking back should have gone with an across
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Update: It’s been nearly a month and I’ve heard back from BVV. They “don’t really know what to do with this situation” so I’m sending the column in for inspection and hopefully a replacement from the claims department (or a refund) will find its way to me. We were talking about pressure ratings earlier in the thread and I know now without having pressure in the column main chamber, the jacketed pressure will cause implosion of main column at 100PSI on a 6x48 jacketed column from bvv. If there’s pressure in the main chamber, the implosion rating extends to 300+PSI.
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The better way to put this is that the vessel is rated for 100psi pressure differential from an external force, and the jacket is rated for 300psig max. It wouldn’t make sense to say that if you put 60psig in the vessel that all of a sudden it would be rated for a jacket pressure of 300psi, when in fact it would only be good for 160 (100 psi max differential).
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Put it however you like, just be sure to let BVV know as that’s verbatim from one of their techs.
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