Water Systems for NMR Chillers

Where does your chilled water come from?

Published April 2006 Reliable water temperature for your NMR is an important design consideration.

You may not want to rely on the campus water system as the source of water for your NMR chillers – have a dedicated chilled water system. The reasoning is that if your NMR center is tied in with the campus chilled water then you are always at the mercy of what the physical plant decides to do with their chilled water. In many places, the physical plant changes the set point in order to save money. However, in some institutions the chilled water is never changed. If it isn't changed, then it is not a problem to tie into this chilled water supply for cooling of the NMR center. One solution, instead of a completely separate system is to have a booster system in place so if the chilled water temperature does move around, you can compensate locally with your booster system.

Additionally, some building owners have expressed that NMR instrument manufacturers won’t tell you what you really need to know when making instrument location decisions – talk to someone at a facility that has recently done an NMR installation.

- From Tradeline's 2006 Summit on Facilities for the Emerging Sciences.