Ilmvac has recently been called on to solve the problem of a noisy and under-performing vacuum pump fitted to cell harvesting equipment
Cell harvesting equipment can be extremely demanding on the vacuum pumps used to aspirate them.
Ilmvac UK has recently been called upon by the James Black Foundation to provide a simple solution.
The existing pump was under-performing, delaying work for the scientists and generating a great deal of noise in the process.
Very high flow rates are required from the vacuum system to cope with the very small bore tubing connections and the 'open flow' condition.
Conventional aspiration options, using water jets or small diaphragm pumps, are not capable of generating the flow rates required and so rotary vane pump are often used.
The difficulty of using a rotary vane pump is that, regardless of the trapping measures taken, vapours from the buffer solutions will enter the pump and contaminate the oil.
The answer lies in the highly flexible Ilmvac MP series of diaphragm pumps.
The multi-head design of these pumps can be tailored to suit the requirement, in this case very high flow rates (up to 260l/min) in favour of final vacuum performance.
Models are available for manual and automatic harvesters with between 48 and 384 lines.
These models are dry-running so contamination is not an issue and service intervals are extended to 10,000 hours. Ilmvac also addressed a noise related issue.
MP pumps produce little noise owing to shaft balancing techniques and with the standard exhaust silencer fitted, one scientist remarked: "I didn't realise it was running".
