Laboratory Freezer Information
Laboratory freezers come in many types and styles which can make choosing the correct freezer for your laboratory a difficult task. Before you contact ENLAKE it’s a good idea to know the answer to the following questions:
1. What temperature does the product need to be stored at?
Most Laboratory freezers operate at minus 20 degrees Celsius. ENLAKE also has under counter freezers that will operate as cold as minus 26 and upright freezer that will run as cold as minus 36 degrees Celsius. The next step is laboratory chest freezers that can go as cold as minus 45 degrees Celsius. If you want to go colder you will be looking at an Ultra Low Temperature (ULT) Freezer. These can go all the way down to minus 86 degrees Celsius but this ability comes at a substantially higher price.
2. Will you be storing any volatile flammable liquids?
Volatile flammable liquids such as solvents inside the lab freezer? If so you will need to select a spark free lab freezer. It is important to be aware that only the interior of a spark free freezer is spark free.
3. Do you need Auto or Manual Defrost?
Manual defrost lab freezers have a static refrigeration system. The primary benefit to this is that they are able to maintain a very tight temperature range, making them the best choice for storing temperature sensitive products. The down side to a static lab freezer is that it must be manually defrosted. How often the freezer must be defrosted will depend on how often the door is opened and how humid the lab is.
Lab freezers with an automatic defrost cycle do not need to be manually defrosted as they periodically heat the cooling evaporator coil for a short period of time to melt any frost that has formed on it. For most lab freezers when the evaporator is being heated the temperature inside the lab freezer will also rise. This situation isn’t ideal for highly temperature sensitive products.
4. Is evaporation of your product an issue?
For products such as agar that can dry out you may need to choose a laboratory fridge that doesn’t have a fan. You will be limited to a static lab freezer, but even then you need to be careful as many static laboratory freezers still have fans to help circulate the air.
5. Would you prefer an upright freezer or a chest freezer?
Most people choose an upright laboratory freezer for the easy access that it provides, but laboratory chest freezers have some distinct advantages.
Because cold air is denser it sinks. When the lid of a laboratory chest freezer is opened the cold air stays inside. When the door of an upright freezer is opened the the cold air falls out. Therefore a laboratory chest freezer will stay closer to the set temperature when the door is opened, it is likely to be more energy efficient and capable of being operated at a lower temperature.
Due to the way that a lab chest freezer is constructed they usually offer more storage capacity per dollar spent.
Laboratory chest freezers have a static refrigeration system and are able to maintain a very tight temperature range, making them ideal for temperature sensitive products. The drawback to static refrigeration is that the laboratory freezer will need to be manually defrosted from time to time.
6. Glass or Solid Door?
The majority of lab freezers have solid doors primarily because a solid door provides far better insulation properties than a double glazed door. Glass doors are only available with freezers that have auto-defrost. This is because the auto-defrost freezers have sizable fans that move the cool air around preventing warm spots from occurring. Even for auto-defrost laboratory freezers there is a limit to how big a freezer can be before too much heat comes in through glass doors for the freezer to maintain a uniform temperature . This is at around the 900 litre mark, with all larger laboratory freezers only being available with solid doors.
