HOT AIR OVEN SELECTION: THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE
Hot air oven uses dry heat sterilization. It has to operate for long durations to perform the task. The hot air oven has to last for many years to perform such a heavy-duty task so it is necessary to carefully select the lab oven that satisfies all your operational needs. This post will help you in selecting your hot air oven with all the features as per your requirement. So read to the end to get the complete details.
Types of hot air oven
Heat is distributed inside the chamber either by gravity convection or by the forced air draft. Different types have their performing characteristics and benefits. If you are not aware of the types check our detailed hot air oven guide.
Testing application
Construction industries use a laboratory hot air oven to dry materials. Different materials have different protocols while heating soils, aggregates. These ovens are used by other industries as per the application.
Chamber selection (capacity)
The chamber size is an important factor to consider for lab oven selection. First, you need to decide your specimen, its size and the number of the specimen you are loading inside the chamber. If your chamber is too small your loading capacity gets affected and it will disturb your workflow. If your chamber size is too large the operating cost will higher to heat the unused chamber area. The oven needs to fit on the available floor space and ceiling clearances. It also has the flexibility to move efficiently through available door openings.
Uniformity
The uniformity of the lab oven is simply the consistency of the temperature at various points inside the chamber. The cold or hot spot affects the accuracy and the test results. We indicate our uniformity ratings for our models.
Recovery time
There are heat losses inside the oven. As the door gets opened frequently for addition and removal of the sample, it puts additional load on the oven. It causes heat loss and adds energy consumption which leads to higher operating cost. Therefore, the temperature recovery time is also an important factor to consider for lab oven selection. Our hot air oven provides a fast recovery time to make sure you will have high-temperature uniformity and accuracy.
Construction material
Many time stainless steel is used to build the inner chamber of the oven to resist corrosion and deterioration. We use materials that are corrosion resistant or the interior side is plated with the galvanized coating to prevent corrosion. The ovens that are built with double-walled or triple-walled construction and the good insulation in between the inner and outer chamber operate more economically and uniformly. If you have any concern regarding the oven construction check our detailed hot air oven construction post.
Control option and safety features
As the innovation continues many controller options are available from single analogue dials to highly accurate microprocessor-based autotune PID controller with digital data logging. Some manufacturer provides data scanner with advance software. Make sure that there has a safe digital controller and a timer to check the oven operation duration and alarm system.
If you process lots of samples every day it is best to select the hot air oven that has timed, automatic in operation with a temperature protection system. If you are completely new to operate the oven the simple is better. As this blog post has various factors there are still few doubts that will take place. Please contact us for any such kind of query and we will make sure to get you the right hot air oven as per your requirement.