Liquid Nitrogen Generator - Overview
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- Опубліковано 17 жов 2024
- This liquid nitrogen generator uses a Stirling-cycle cryocooler that was pulled from a cellular phone tower. It was used to cool a superconducting RF filter that aids cell communications. The cryocooler is able to pump enough heat away from its cold end that air will liquify and drip into a vacuum flask for storage.
Jeri's video at Maker Faire 2010: • DIY Liquid Nitrogen fo...
Blog post with more construction details: benkrasnow.blog...
Nitrogen I can get, Oxygen is harder. I may build something like this to make liquid O2. I think I'll also make the cryo cooller because why not! ;)
keep your hands in tact I like your vids Cody
+Cody'sLab You are in luck. The boiling point of nitrogen is lower than oxygen, so if you connect an oxygen cylinder (eg for welding) to some copper tubing, and submerge part of the tubing in LN2, you will get liquid oxygen out the end as it condenses in the tubing. Direct it into a styrofoam cup or thermos, and voila! There is an ancient video on my channel showing me pouring liquid oxygen onto a charcoal briquette fire. It's fun! Your videos are great!
You really should. I'd love to see you make that and do some experiments with LOX. Maybe even a hybrid rocket using LOX you made.
why do you not separate the Oxygen from the liquid Air at the end with The magnet? the assembly would be so more efficient and also compact
let's go ahead and make it Cody, I love you Videos
This channel amazes me. I'm currently studying thermodynamics with all sorts of stuff that I would only expect in a multi-million dollar power plant with years of planning, and then Ben comes along and builds something like this on his lab bench like it was Lego. Truly astonishing.
Evidently, you haven't seen the video where he casually upgrades an old electron microscope to be modern so it can keep his home-made one company.
Just wanted to thank Ben for this channel. What an inspirational human being.
guitron Thanks! I really appreciate it!
Applied Science what if you use magnets to seperate the nitrogen from the oxygen when its in the liquid phase!!
MysteriusBhoice what molecule is polarized?
NwoDispatcher oxygen is paramagnetic
Man, rock on. This is awesome.
Hello NightHawkInLight, fancy seeing you here!
Yeah you have to use a desiccant to effectively dry the air. I've worked fairly extensively with these systems and the best approach is generally to have two pressure vessels that have a vibrating probe that vibrates at a rate inversely proportional to th dew point in the air. Then when one desiccant gets saturated, you can switch to the other, and send the first vessel into a regenerative cycle that involves back flowing hot air through the desiccant to remove the moisture.
So how long does the compressor need to run to collect enough gas that would then yeild an equal volume to the amount of liquid air you had in the cup? I would guess it's quite a while....
Peter Brown The more important question is: Can you add epoxy to it and turn it on a lathe?
Way late on this but its continuous flow
Thanks for making these videos.
Eugene Khutoryansky Hai i see you are on every good videos :)
I wish Jeri would start making videos again. She's awesome. I've learned a lot from the videos she has up. I hope she's doing well.
How did you remove the fins? Were they brazed on and you removed the solder or did you just cut them off?
Cool Ben! Really cool.... Literally!
Superb job!
My god, this is amazing. To even think this is possible in a home shop is so cool.
Super cool video from Ben Krasnow...with liquid air!
I learned so much in such little time. Awesome!
I've never heard such a clear explanation of the Stirling cycle before. Thank you!
I would say that I'm a smart man but watch all your videos makes me feel dumb!!
but you make me work harder every day so that i can be as good as you some day!!
thanks!!!!!
The clarity with which you explain things makes it very simple to grasp. Thank you.
How cool! There has been a lot of work experimenting with metals and cryogenically freezing them. The first article I read about was about a guy that bought a new Honda Car, not sure which one, who pulled the engine out and tore it completely apart. He then cryogenically froze the entire engine, letting it soak for several hours and then slowly bringing it back up to ambient temperature. When he reassembled it and put it back I to the car he found an decrease in fuel consumption and wear. That in itself was pretty amazing. A short time later some guitar string manufacturers began freezing their strings and found that they sounded brighter and lasted longer than untreated strings. It would be interesting to see what else can be done with liquid Nitrogen. Thanks for the video. It's going to help a lot of back yard experimenters!
Very nice Ben. Thank you.
The Signal Path Blog Hah, fancy seeing you here, Shahriar :)
I like to think of myself as pretty well educated, and then this guy comes along and I realize that I don't know jack about engineering. Touche applied science.
The more you know, the more you come to know the less you know. Its great! Aha
So would it be theoretically possible to use an electromagnet to separate the oxygen from the nitrogen? Maybe not completely but enough to get over 50% or more?
Larry Menasco Hmm, maybe a good topic for upcoming experiment!
I don't know about actual separation, but I've seen a tear down video (from mikeselectricstuff if I remember correctly) of an oxygen concentration sensor/measurement device that was based on magnetic effects.
Larry Menasco My thoughts exactly!
Larry Menasco Or even permanent magnets on a rotating wheel with a wiper
Applied Science I'd watch that. How hard would it be to build your own sterling pump? It seems like tuning the counter balance would be one of the biggest challenges.
A/S Great Video - Its videos like this that bring the once taboo commercial technologies down too the reach and understanding of layman,.. you are truly a gift to mankind.
Great video! Like how you pointed out the tip re the colour change. We used to regularly check our dewers of LN2 to make sure they weren't getting on the blue side of things.
Jeri Ellsworth and Ben Krasnow, two of the biggest badasses in the diy engineering community
You are freaking wizard 🙏 Even though I didn't understand half the stuff you were explained, it was still mesmerizing and educational to watch🙏 Thank you Mr. Professor
Veritasium did this way simpler and on his living room floor, when you say your setup is convoluted, you got it dude
Phenomenal video as always! It would be interesting to see how much liquid oxygen you could separate via magnetic fields.
As I said elsewhere to @Applied Science - Just put the magnet on the side of the cup or dewar and the LOX will go to it, which in turn will push the LN2 away from the magnet. The LOX zone will turn blue, and you will be able to extract fairly pure LOX from that zone, without the bother of distilling the liquids via reflux, as done commercially. You can also use any excess coldness of LN2 to pre-cool incoming air, increasing the liqufaction rate. For every drop of LOX produced, you will need about 2 drops of LN2 just because of the difference in heat capacity of the liquids. That leaves 2 more drops of LN2 to pre-cool the incoming air. If the air is dry, you will not waste cooling power on making ice and dry ice. _Contraflow heat exchangers_ are great for these effects.
I'm in awe of your ambition let alone your results !
Amazing man, watched half a dozen time and still find him interesting.
Love that line "Could have bought it cheaper, but you don't learn anything." I subscribed after hearing that.
Very nice, I'm just starting to dip in to your video library.
A question I have is, how much did the cryocooler cost and where did you get it from?
Could you separate the liquid oxygen from the nitrogen in bulk using magnetism? You could get 2 fun cryogenic liquids at once from the same setup! (one to start fires and one to put them out).
Is There any way to decrease Temp of Kitchen refrigerator below 0C to -C ???? Or it's possible to convert this refrigerator into cryogenic type !!!!!
X-TREME Diy yes its possible. You can replace refrigerant which i thinks is probably R600 or R600a.
Replace it with propane and you will get temperature of -42*C easily.
For converting it to cryogenic type you will have to connect another refrigeration system in series with different gas like Ethylene ( -103*C)
this is by far the best channel im subscribed to
Every day Ben gets closer and closer to becoming an actual Mr. Freeze.
Keep up the enlightening videos, i'm a huge fan!
you made a reverse of a 'home oxygen concentrator' !! LOVE IT!!!!
Mr. Krasnov, you amaze me everytime. Congratulations for the great built.
3:38 "As you can see it's completely pink now..."
I must be colorblind then, because I sure as hell don't see any pink on the beads!
It is very faintly pink
@@leejerrett8268 it goes from a very noticeable blue to a faint pink so the contrast makes it pretty obvious in use.
Your video is awesome, I just watched another youtubers cryo cooler vid and he goes out and just buys a cryo cooler, has no idea how any of it works, essentially just reads me a wikipedia article, and his video had a sponsor and a few million views, thats ridiculous, it's so sad UA-cam should be promoting videos like yours, you deserve more views please dont stop making videos!
Really great stuff! I love that your channel is such a mixed bag. You never know what you'll find here so its always a great surprise!
It's always a treat to visit your channel ben. Thanks.
Very cool set up! makes me wonder if the best way to purify the air as it flows through the system is a series of condensations. Compress the air, then cool it in stages to separate out first water, then oxygen and then finally the nitrogen. Might even be able to dial it in to get liquid argon or dry ice.
You are only one who can explain best by such Awesome expensive Experiments 👍👍 so please Make some videos on #Super strong And Super Conductive Material #Graphene !!!! and its Batteries !!!!! , many other UA-camrs shows it's very easy to make by pulling out Graphite using sticky tape you can make super conductor Graphene , but tried it many times , but that's what i found that's not more then super Resistor . instead Conductor !!!!!!!!! ????
Love it, thanks Ben. Been needing something akin to this for some superconducting experiments
The paramagnetic demo makes me wonder if you could partially separate the liquid air with a magnet array and vent from an oxygen enriched side chamber.
How how a electromagnetic waveguide? You could use a series of electromagnetic fields to move the O2 along
Would it be simpler to make liquid air and use a magnet conveyor to remove the oxygen?
Well you need to take into account all the moisture in the air
Submerged superconductive magnets? N2 is also lighter than O2 which would aide in separation. Between magnetic effects and a minor difference in relative densities perhaps the N2 could be floated off.
Bingo - Fractional Distillation, the same process that is used in oil refineries.
Thank you for all the videos. It inspires me to tinker and learn more.
This video is awesome. I had no idea that devices that freezes temperatures so low could be so small. Also got me thinking that superconductive application doesn't have to be extremely complicated when maybe cryocooler could be made even smaller and fit into smaller devices with an automatic handled superconductive solution.
Very cool. Is there a reason (apart from efficiency) not to do the separation at the liquid side through magnetic fields?
Allan Stirling I doubt you could efficiently remove all the oxygen via magnets and there's still a bunch of water in that cup.
Allan Stirling I couldn't (quickly) find any information I could readily understand that shows how well mixed the two liquids are, or how easy it would be to separate them. A quick look shows that liquid nitrogen is a bit less than twice the weight of liquid oxygen, so perhaps spin separation could work. They also have slightly different boiling points, so some precise temperature control could boil one off and keep the other.
I guess it comes down to how easily you can get a filter on the room temperature gas stage to purify the nitrogen, and if you'd rather avoid having to deal with high concentrations of oxygen to begin with.
With that said, it would be pretty interesting to see some kind of electromagnetic elevator siphoning oxygen out of liquid air like a solid state pump.
Totally awesome!
At what point are you worried about the safety of liquid oxygen?
I suppose one could separate LN2 and O2 magnetically as well no? put really dry air into the chiller, and pass through some sort of apparatus that would apply a magnetic field pulling the O2 one way and allowing the LN2 to pass.
+Skwisgar2322 Ahh, seems i was not the first parson to think of that (as usual) www.google.com/patents/US4704139 though that seems to be operating on the gas not liquid phase.
You've probably already considered this, but have you considered any novel methods of separating liquid air with mechanical means exploiting the difference in paramagnetism? It seems that one could possibly reduce the complexity of the apparatus.
The spring mass system shown is not for damping. It is to tune the displacer. The voicecoil in the unit drives the piston. The mass of the damper and the spring constant is tuned so that the pneumatic "helium spring" driven motion of the displacer by the voicecoil- driven piston is tuned close to the piston drive frequency by lagging in phase by an amount that will allow a reasonably efficient Stirling cycle phase lag. There is generally a similar tuned spring system attached to the piston tuned to the voice coil H-bridge drive frequency. The phase lag means that the displacer phase will never "cog" or jump a step, and remain faithfully at the design phase lag desired. This allows a smaller, less expensive, more reliable cooler than introducing a mechanically enforced phase lag.
This method is used in a wide variety of commercial linear compressor coolers.
Great video!
You spoke a lot about your filter set up to filter out the oil from the compressor, and I noticed that there wasn't any way to capture the oil and input it back into the compressor. Are you worried about the oil potentially running low on your compressor? I'm not an expert on compressors - I assume it's a very small amount of oil leaving the compressor, but I'm uncertain how much you'll be running it - and any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Another excellent video! Have you considered using the mechanics of a medical oxygen concentration to generate your nitrogen? As I understand it, when air is compressed in a cylinder filled with zeolite, the nitrogen is absorbed leaving oxygen to pass through. When the cylinder is de-pressurized, the nitrogen is released which you can capture for liquification.
Very cool video, Ben [I know, bad pun]
lots of interesting components explained. I worked for high vacuum semiconductor equipment manufacturers - back in the day. Brings me back. I was going to be like you when I grew up but took the wrong turn at party central.
Again, very interesting stuff. One more thing: I remember the sound of helium cryopumps, they always had a low-frequency(approximately one second) almost a slow, steam engine sound to them. Thank you.
Would it be possible to distill the liquid air? You should be able to purify the gas by letting the nitrogen evaporate and then condensing it on the cooler.
You overclocked your LN2 generator so you can get LN2 for overclocking faster... I like this channel.
Love it.... Would a strong Nd magnet allow you to separate a liquid nitrogen oxygen mixture (with good separation) or would the attracted portion still contain a large percentage of nitrogen?
This is extremely cool 8-) (pun intended). Great work! I wonder if more powerful dessicants can be used instead of silica gel. Concentrated H2SO4 or P2O5 would be ideal I think, but there are probably too corrosive, an agent that chemically binds the water instead of just adsorbing it would be swell. But as for adsorbants: I wonder if molecular sieves would do the job? Anyway, I am very impressed, I just wonder how much the whole setup costed? Used cryocoolers alone go from $500 to $2000 on Ebay.
That's cool :) Just wondering... Can't you save a ton of equipment by making liquid air just with the cryocooler, and then separate the oxygen with magnets? Plus you get to keep the liquid O2
Great demo! I love it. Could you use the oxygen magnetic properties for somehow rig a system to separate the O2 and Nitrogen?
I have to assume a magnet on the bottom of the container would allow skimming nitrogen into another container
would it be possible to use one of those cryocoolers in extreme overclocking? The whole reason that we don't have 9 ghz processors in all our gaming desktops is because you need liquid nitrogen to pull that off, and liquid helium to get any further.
This is so cool! I really want a cryo cooler my self.
I have one of these cryocoolers a Hybrid 98, similar to yours. What I do not have is the control board. I used a variac to test it, ramping up power slowly at 60hz. I never went past 20% or about 24VAC, although I saw on another video that one individual runs a similar unit up to 110VAC. Mine gets cold, but I did not want to ramp it up too much as I am not sure of what the limits of what the unit can handle and I did not want to damage it. I also noticed that their is significant vibration and a rattle at the top of my unit. I am thinking something is off with the counterbalance. I don't know if you know the rough power up, max power ratings for the cryocooler but any information would be appreciated since I do not have a control board for it.
I see your getting other heavy hitters to comment here as well, Grant Thompson and Cody Reeder. You have quite an audience.
got the rattle fixed, I found that the nuts had come loose that were connecting the counterweight washers to the spring. Still trying to test it, but it does work. I may use a spare Arduino to control ramping it up slowly at startup.
To separate the oxygen from nitrogen... vapor coming out of the liquefied air must contain higher concentration of nitrogen. Due to boiling temperature difference nitrogen will be the first to vaporize, right?... would it be an option to re-liquefy the liquid air vapor into high nitrogen content?
as you mentioned the option of liquefied nitrogen for moisture removal - liquid air can be used for that. It would help to produce more air vapor too... theoretically, could the product of each step be used to increase the quality of previous steps of purification? just like in an incremental distillation column.
Tomas Sab Bubbling moist air through a saturated saltwater solution would also work, unintuitive as that may seem.
Probably one of the coolest videos I have ever seen, this guy never fails to amaze me! Tell me again why your NOT working for NASA?
Great video, I would really like to hear your opinion about the water trap placement.
@2:25 Would the water trap perform much better if it was placed after the pressure regulator?. As the regulation/expansion of air would cause a rather rapid decrees in temperature and better aid the water trap in condensing moisture, compared to if it was placed prior to the regulator on the "hot side" so to speak.
I like your science pole. Useful for pointing at manifolds and apparati.
Hey Ben, greetings from another Ben!
It seems like someone having a hard time finding a suitable nitrogen filter membrane would be able to use an automated dipping rig to remove the oxygen content post-chill. What do you think? Would the efficiency hit be too great vs. the reduced equipment cost?
CoWolArc An automated magnet dipping rig, that is.
Thank you Ben, for continuing to use your powers for good. Very interesting, as always.
Very interesting video!
Despite the fact I have no idea what you said, I was captivated and interested the entire time!
Next video, you should tell us what is going on in English xD
Amazing. This is a bit late, but do you have a nitrogen alarm? Film processing labs that use nitrogen bubbles to agitate the chemical baths have these alarms. I'm sure you know that if a nitrogen tank leaks it can displace the oxygen in a space. This is apparently undetectable to people, so a person could pass out and suffocate.
I once had five chunks of dry ice (I think there's a standard size of these) in my classroom. By the afternoon I was feeling a bit dizzy, but I wasn't gasping for air (which I think is the human response to high levels of CO2, which we can detect). I opened the windows, but I also realized I had no idea what the actual volume at standard air pressure of CO2 gas was in those blocks.
how much electricity required to converted air into liquid air, for one kg of liquid air required how much kilowatt's hours of electricity
Really interesting, thanks !
How hard would it be for a well equipped hobbyist to make the sterling cryocooler itself ?
I assume they are using a rhombic drive Beta Stirling, would something simpler work (even if at a cost of more kWh per liter of LN2 ) ?
Any idea where to source these cryocooler and oxygen separation membrane ?
Do you generate argon too ?
How effective are the oil coalescing filter ? I'd like to compress oxygen with the heat pump compressors, I know what happens if you store high pressure oxygen with oil. Are these oil filters good enough for that purpose ?
I'd really like to generate my own O² / argon / co² / nitrogen to reduce my shop costs so this video has been very informative, thanks !
Hey Ben. Here is an interesting question for you. Let's say you already have some liquid nitrogen or liquid air and the cryocooler isn't running at the time and you'd like to start it up quickly. Could you dip the cold tip in the liquid nitrogen, wait until it comes down to temperature and then start the cryocooler up at full power without ramping it up over ~10 min? I was thinking of doing that with a styrofoam cup full of LN2, starting at full voltage, and then replacing the cup of LN2 with my dewar. Just a thought! :)
I'm looking back at your videos and man, this is cool stuff
So you can actually make liquid nitrogen in your own garage. I always thought such process would require loads of industrial-grade equipment. How many kg/liters of liquid nitrogen can you produce if you leave it running for a day? How cost effective this method is?
I do enjoy your videos quite a lot, please keep them coming. Thank you for taking the time to produce and upload them. Fascinating.
I always love the way he ends his videos. Just wanted to show you that I am capable of playing around with the forces of nature.... well, see ya.
Just curious, how much did all that hardware set you back? Just the stuff that you had to buy, not the repurposed gear.
This is just great. I was going to say it's super cool but that may have been taken wrong.
Do commercial operations collect some compressed air and use pressure and temperature to condense oxygen first? Then cool further to make liquid nitrogen if needed.
You can dry the gas to a very high degree by passing it through a column of NaOH pellets, available from your local supermarket probably.
you got to add another 30 seconds in the end so that we have time to subscribe and like. Great videos dude.
Is there a way to seperate the oxygen post cooling using the magnet with some sort of barrier and siphoning/decanting the liquid to avoid having to purchace the gas seperator? Or is that impractical?
Interesting machine, however, I must admit, I do not understand the purpose of it yet. Any links worth for me to check out about this subject?
I see a lot of potential here. I was thinking of making my own electronic flow meter. There are the cheap plastic type, and the expensive servo-motor type of needle valve controllers. A cheap way to get one is to gut a Mass Flow controller used to make semiconductor wafers. I used to work for a company that made them: Unit Instruments, Yorba Linda, CA.
Question for you Ben: Since neodymium magnets are a lot easier to come by, could you first liquefy air then separate the O2 from the N2 via magnets and pour them into two separate dewars? Seems like you could also simplify the set up by just letting ice form on the Stirling cylinder tip and/or dry it out upstream with a cold trap. Am I dreaming?
Love your vids and your ingenuity!
SuperDachshund How 'bout this?Liquify the air like you do here then drop it down a funnel emptying into a 1" long tube that is cut away like a trough for the last half inch. Then position the corner of a square neodymium magnet near the trough.The O2 will leap out of the trough and run down the edge of the magnet a half inch or so away while the N2 will continue down and out the trough. Now you've separated the two elements. You could put a large tube in the dewar to capture the O2 dripping off the bottom corner of the magnet. The N2 will drip in the dewar and the O2 will drip in the tube/tank inside the dewar. CO2 and H2O and many other impurities are filtered out upstream or in the ice accumulating on the Stirling cold side.What do ya think?
It seemed like you didn't actually use the dry nitrogen that your drying system was generating. Would you just plug in the dry nitrogen gas storage container into the cryo cooler to generate the high purity liquid nitrogen?
This is so awesome, do you happen to know if the mass used on top of the cooler is a mass just with a spring or also with a damper?
Could you liquify total air, then separate it magnetically to avoid the diffusion membrane? Seems like it would be less energy efficient, but if you were selling both...
We had a shuttle experiment years ago that used TEC's as the heat pump. When the cold side was exposed to air, liquid air dropped from it quite fast at 280 watts input. I don't see how that isn't the cheapest and most efficient way to make it. The humidity turns straight into ice and should be simple to run a defrost cycle on it occasionally, but the rough ice surface presents a lot more surface area to seed the liquification of air. A simple magnetic concentrator could be used to separate the oxygen and nitrogen, but even more simple would be to have 2 TECs, the first set at a temp half way between lox and lni, then duct this first stage to a second stage that is well below lni. 2 separate distillers giving 2 separate liquids into 2 separate dewers. Easy peasy. Perfectly quiet solid state solution.
Come to think of it, a first stage running at 0.5C should distill out all the water, the the second stage could be set at -195C and the third at -250C. The whole airflow through the stages could be gravity fed.
Would it work to use your heat pump to liquify air and then use neodymium magnets to separate liquid oxygen from the liquid nitrogen? It might be easier to do than use the gas separator.
Wow! Cann you tell me where you get all your knowledge? It seems to me that you learned everything what an electrical and mechanical engineer knows
Ben, wouldn't it be better just to use a oil less air compressor instead of the dirty refrig. compressor.? it won't last long, unless you return the oil to the refrig. compressor and some back cooling.
Do you have any specs (modelnumber, manufacturer) on the equipment you removed the cryopump from? I'd like to see what kind of beast this sat in.
Very interesting......just what do you want that much liquid Nitrogen for?
He just uploaded the video about cryogenic treatment of steel drills
Where can I find a cheap but working cryocooler, I can't seem to find one
Hey Ben, it got me wondering, if you could separate the N2 and the O2 by using a magnetic field? Since they have different magnetic properties...
engineers, wielders, chemist.. you guys are smart
Awesome video. Could you get liquid Nitrogen by making liquid air and separating out the oxygen with a magnet?