[labnetwork] Suggestion for nitrogen generator

[Chang, Long]

Hi Li,

This happened a few years ago, but our school decided to stop paying for liquid nitrogen to our building. From what I heard, it costs roughly $0.5M per year. I was shocked, so I wanted to determine our usage. Since we don’t have meters in our building, I performed a theortical assessment which suggest that our usage was low enough to run the facility using N2 tanks. Using the N2 tank lead me to fix some leaks in the cleanroom. We use roughly 4 tanks for N2 a week, so it’s manageable.

From memory, the biggest waste of N2 purging pumps 24/7. One of our RIE has an addon that only purges the pump during a process. For the older RIE, I just installed a valve and added and instruction to SOP. The only other source of waste were N2 leaks in N2 guns and the plumbing.

Best,
Long Chang
UH Nanofabrication Facility
Houston, TX
lvchang at central.uh.edu<mailto:lvchang at central.uh.edu>
On Nov 4, 2024, at 9:49 AM, Chen, Li <li-chen at ucl.ac.uk<mailto:li-chen at ucl.ac.uk>> wrote:

Hello cleanroom experts,

We at London Centre for Nanotechnology rely on the liquid nitrogen boil off for our cleanroom tools for purging, venting, N2 gun, etc. However the running cost reviewed recently is very high. So what we propose is to introduce a nitrogen generator to supply a large amount for daily operation, and reduce the Liquid Nitrogen consumption. Therefore the total cost should go down in the long term operation.

It is very much appreciated if you can share your experience for nitrogen generator use at your facility.

We are particularly interested in the following:
What purity / grade of nitrogen can your nitrogen generator produce? Where do you use for this nitrogen in your facility: venting process chambers, vacuum pump purging, nitrogen gun? Which manufacturer do you use / recommend to use? It is expensive to do the maintenance/service? How long do you need to have a maintenance service for the nitrogen generator?

Many thanks!
Li

Dr Li Chen (he/him)
Cleanroom Manager
London Centre for Nanotechnology
17-19 Gordon Street
London WC1H 0AH
li-chen at ucl.ac.uk<mailto:li-chen at ucl.ac.uk>
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