Climate Chamber

Climate Chamber

A climate chamber, also known as environmental test chamber is a kind of testing equipment used for replicating climatic or environmental conditions under which a machinery or a component may be exposed to and to record the changes in its performance in the given conditions. Such chambers are also used to accelerate climatic conditions to check and certify equipment or machinery’s reliability is such conditions. The conditions that can be usually checked in such chambers are (but not limited to, depending on the type and make) as follows:

# Humidity variations (moisture/ relative humidity)

# Temperature variations (extreme temperatures and sudden variations)

# EMF (electro magnetic forces)

# EMF radiations

# Electro dynamic radiations

# Weathering

# Rains and storms

# UV Radiation and exposure to sunlight

# Vacuum and high pressure and

# UV degradation

A climate chamber is used within the above controlled parameters depending upon the equipment, component, machinery or the sample that requires testing. Also, monitoring the performance will depend upon the equipment and use of the said sample. For different samples, different tests are conducted depending upon their practical use. For example, an internal combustion engine need not be tested under vacuum unless the equipment for which it is designed is going to be used in space.

In certain cases, the samples would need to be conditioned before putting them to test in the climate chamber and accordingly, they are kept in smaller units for the said conditioning. All climate chambers available can be used for testing individual conditions and parameters and the modern ones can be used to test for a series of parameters depending on requirement since they come with a complicated programming interface. Let us look at some of the features of the most sought after climatic chambers today.

Darwin Chambers

Darwin chambers manufactures a variety of products that consist of environmental chambers/ rooms, stability testing chambers and laboratory incubators. They also make customized environmental chambers suited to a laboratory’s specific use. These chambers come with casters, brushed finished aluminum sides and the standard 300 series stainless steel fronts. The special features of these chambers include:

# Energy efficiency

# Ambient storage suited to aerospace industries

# Moisture curing rooms

# Concrete curing rooms

# Machine testing enclosures

# Industrial dry rooms

# Dry chambers

# Electronic burn in testing

# Lexan enclosures

# Entomology rearing chambers and rooms

All Darwin environmental chambers come with customizable program control and are easy to use.

ICH Climate chambers

Another major supplier of environmental chambers is ICH and they are known for providing reliable climate chambers suitable to stability testing. All climate chambers from ICH come with top quality platinum temperature sensors and are capable working continuously for long periods. The highlights of these temperature chambers are:

# Wide temperature range - -10C to +60C

# Big chambers – 256 litres

# Top end climatic control

# Relative humidity control is digital and the range is from 10% to 80%

# Glass door caging and double doors for added contamination control

# UV radiation spectral range form 315 – 400nm (8000 Lux intensity)

# Fluorescent lighting – 6500K/D65

# Precision temperature control (even in rapid mode) Peltier heating and cooling

# No evaporator drying/ icing/ dehumidification

# Compatible with DIN 12880:2007-05, each unit is tested and stamped accordingly

We can see from the above that climate chambers have evolved in last few decades and they incorporate a host of modernistic features. In addition to these, the modern climate chambers are safer to use and more reliable as far as inferences are concerned thus making products and samples tested through them much more reliable.