CRYOGENIC GRINDING SYSTEM
A fully automated cryogenic freezing system for grinding and dispensing frozen biomass samples.
System Overview.
The Cryogenic Grinding system is built around a chest freezer which maintains an average operating temperature of -60 degrees. It has the capacity for 96 scintillation input tubes and 576 X 1.4ml Micronic output tubes. Stainless steel ball bearings along with the sample are placed into the input tubes before they are frozen and manually placed into the freezer.
Generally, the system pick’s a scintillation tube and places it to the grinding module. The grinding module violently shakes the tube causing the ball bearings to pulverise the contained sample. After grinding the system pierces the base of the input tube and places it into the feeding station. Directly below the ground and pierced scintillation tube an output tube is placed. The feeding station gently vibrates the input tube to disrupt the finely ground sample causing it to fall through the pierced hole and into the output tube below. The weight of the output tube is monitored by a 4-place balance. The weight is recorded to an output file by the system before it returns both the tubes back to their specific racks.
Key Features.
High Throughput
Up to 96 input tubes in 20 hours.
Powder dispensing
Automatic powder feeding into 1.4ml vials
Accuracy
Powder dispenses to +/- 0.002g
Ball mill grinding
Automation of grinding sample at -60 degrees C
Configurable feeding and grinding
Adjust the grinding parameters of grinding and feeding to suit a range of input materials
Output Formats
Define the output format including replication, sequential and manual mapping methods
Different Run Types
The system also has the ability to only grind or dispense input tubes.