New! Product Demo

View the
Gruenberg Steri-Dry™ Dry Heat Sterilizer
Interactive
Product Demo

T30VU145SS Gruenberg Vivarium Sterilizer
Larger image

VS30 Gruenberg Dry Heat Sterilizer for Animal Lab Vivarium
Larger image

Gruenberg Vivarium Sterilizer

The Gruenberg Steri-Dry™ Vivarium Sterilizer provides the animal care market with equipment to sterilize animal habitat cages through the process of dry heat sterilization. These sterilizers are designed and built for lab animal science applications. This line of sterilizers has a maximum temperature of 340°F.

Features

• Heavy-duty, fully welded structural steel frame
• Exteriors constructed of 16 and 18 304 L stainless steel with a #4 polish to withstand frequent wash downs
• Direct drive circulation system
• All interior surfaces are 100 percent continuously welded 316 L stainless for quick and easy wash downs
• Custom trucks, trays and other transfer carts are available
• Plate steel floor

Gruenberg sterilizers incorporate a flexibility of design that allows customization to suit virtually every application. These systems are built to ensure a smooth and quiet operation, which is an important feature when working around noise-sensitive animals.

Oven Construction

Chamber Construction

The ovens are constructed from a welded heavy-duty steel frame that supports the interior steel chamber and the exterior sheet metal. All interconnecting struts are non-continuous from inner to outer walls, thus keeping the exterior as cool as possible. A full 4” of insulation surrounds the work chamber on all sides with the exception of the floor, which contains three.

Fully Welded Liner

The oven’s liner is continuously welded thus creating an impervious barrier between the process chamber and the insulation material and preventing any contamination from entering the chamber from that source.

Doors

Double doors are fitted to the loading side of the oven. Both doors and oven are reinforced at all attachment points in order to maintain true door operation. The doors are hung on heavy-duty industrial hinges and close over a silicon rubber gasket and are held closed by a two-point, cam-action, bar latch.

Floor

The ovens contain a raised insulated floor, the design of which allows mating of the system transfer cart for loading.

Loading Truck

Three type 304 stainless steel loading trucks are provided with the unit. The trucks are constructed of 1” x 1” stainless steel square tubing, with all the welds ground smooth and polished and enclosed in 304 SS sheet material. *Sheet material seams are sealed with a silicone sealant. The trucks contain no open ends and measure approximately 27.7” W x 30.6” D x 81.69” H with 3 shelf levels, each with a SS wire rack. The trucks have one side-hinged panel, secured by (3) ¼ turn locking devices to allow for loading/unloading.

The top and bottom of the cart will be provided with dampered inlet and outlet ducts, which will be in the open position when subject to positive pressure from the circulation system of the sterilizing oven. *A positive pressure seal will be provided on the inlet duct of the truck and utilized when connected to the positive pressure system on the transfer cart. A positive latch mechanism shall integrate into this coupling.

Positive Pressure Transfer Cart

Three type 304 stainless steel transfer carts are supplied for loading the positive pressure trucks into and removing them from the oven. They have four 4” diameter Plastex casters made to avoid damaging floors, two are swivel and two are rigid. Hand bars are placed at a convenient height for transportation. A latching device is used on the hand bar to secure and release the truck.

The rear of the transfer cart incorporates a 115 VAC 60 Hz blower system; designed to pressurize the loading truck with HEPA filtered air. A male connector is utilized to mate with the positive seal of the loading truck.

Air Circulation System

A high volume, 6,000 CFM vertical up airflow system is installed in the unit. Two 3HP direct drive circulation blowers located in a conditioning plenum chamber in the rear of the oven, direct the conditioned air into a pressure plenum at the bottom of the oven. The pressurized air opens louvers located in the bottom of the loading truck, allowing the air path to enter the truck; travels vertically up through the truck to exit through a pressure-operated louver opening at the top. Secondary airflow travels on the outside of the loading truck up through the oven system, where it is passed back to the conditioning plenum at the top of the unit.

*Note: Output of the circulation blowers are controlled by a Variable Frequency Drive to allow correct tuning of the oven system.

Air Heating System (Electric)

Seamless-tubular incolloy type heaters that produce a high energy, efficient output, supply electric heat. *The heaters are suspended in the plenum, adjacent to, but separate from the process chamber, so that work in progress and operators are protected. Terminal ends are inserted through the walls of the oven and use sufficient dead zones so that heat is not generated beyond the plenum. All heaters are wired with double nut connections.

Forced Air Exhaust Blower

A 140 CFM powered exhauster is installed to allow the system to operate under negative pressure. The exhauster is supplied with a manual damper.

Controls and Instrumentation Control Panel

All operating controls for the oven are housed in a single SS NEMA 1 wall mounted control panel. This panel will be designed for remote wall mounting. Wiring will terminate in a numbered terminal block. Interconnect wiring will be the responsibility of the customer.

Disconnect Switch

A circuit breaker, power disconnect is installed for safe maintenance of the sterilizer. The disconnect assures that the panel power is de-energized before the access door can be opened.

Temperature Controller

A Yokogawa UT150 digital temperature controller is provided. The controller is microprocessor-based with single input, dual output and auto tuning. Additional features include dual digital display, accuracy at 0.1 percent of span, easy setup and operator friendly prompts.

High Limit Thermostat

A separate, independent Yokogawa UT150L-RN high limit thermostat is provided to de-energize the heating system should the process temperature reach the customer’s preset limit. The high limit control must be manually reset to reactivate heating.

Airflow

A pressure differential switch is installed and located in the air stream of the circulation and forced air systems. Upon failure of either system, the airflow switch will de-energize the heater circuit.

Separate Main Power Relay

This relay is in addition to the normal relays serving the heater circuits. It is wired into the control circuit so that the high limit thermostat activates it. Should the main relays become mechanically frozen, as a result of extended use, this “back up” relay is deactivated and the heat system will be de-energized.

Solid State Relay

Gruenberg ovens do not use mercury relays or contain any mercury. All power modulation is 100 percent solid-state for improved accuracy of control, enhanced reliability and reduced electrical noise.

A Watlow DIN-A-MITE®, solid-state power control is used to improve energy efficiency by balancing heater output to power demand. DIN-A-MITE® benefits include: faster heater switching for saving energy and extending heater life, touch safe terminals for improving user safety, and back-to-back SCR design for increasing durability.

Door Switch

A door switch is installed on the oven to de-energize the heating and circulation systems when the oven door is opened. This is to prevent hot air from being expelled from the oven should the door be opened during the heating cycle.

Magnehelic Gauges

Two Magnehelic gauges are provided on the control panel FACE to register pressure drop across the inlet HEPA filter and the chamber pressure.

Temperature Uniformity

The oven is equipped to maintain a temperature uniformity of ± 5ºF, at a test temperature of 300ºF. Test temperature readings are taken at 9 points within a volume of space not exceeding 80 percent of the work chamber or closer than 3 from any of the six interiors surfaces and with the oven empty.

Allen Bradley GFX-70 Display

Lights are supplied to display the following:

1. Process Timer.
2. Start/Stop Interface.
3. Alarm Displays.
4. IO Displays.

*As a minimum, lights are supplied to display the following:

1. Power on.
2. Heat On.
3. High Limit Alarm.
4. Airflow Alarm.

*Process Timer

The oven is supplied with a microprocessor-based, solid-state timer that features a 4½ digit display with ½” tall digits. Programming is entered through a sealed, membrane keypad. The timer provides 5 user-selectable timing ranges up to 200 hours. Unless otherwise specified, the timer will be factory set for the 199-hour range. Timing accuracy is ±0.001 percent.

Temperature Recorder (Optional)

A Honeywell DR4300GP single pen recorder, with a 10 diameter circular chart and 24 hour or 7 day chart speed may be provided. The unit includes a thermocouple type temperature sensor. Customer is to specify desired chart speed at the time of order placement.

*Energy Efficiency

Connected Services: Maximum usage under all systems full-load operation are supplied with confirmation drawings.

*Refers to only the T30VU145SS