FAQ's - Sterile Insect Technique (SIT/SIR)
Ventilation is required for the water chiller. Generally we advise our customers to place the water chiller in a separate room that has good ventilation to be able to disperse the heat coming from the X-ray tube.
CDRH stands for the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH). Performance Standards for Ionizing Radiation Emitting Products can be found at CDRH 21CFR1020.40
The RS 2400 is shielded very well. That said, should personnel attempt to open the X-ray door during operation, the unit will immediately fault and shut off.
We do not provide dosimeters for dosimetry. We recommend using the Gafchromic film, generally HD 810.
If there is a complete power failure the unit would shutoff and the onboard battery would retain the processing information for that cycle. We can modify the unit to have any additional power generation protection you desire.
The unit only generates radiation when it is producing X-rays. Therefore it is completely safe if there is a power failure. For processing purposes, if there is a complete power failure the unit would shutoff and the onboard battery would retain the processing information for that cycle. We can modify the unit to have any additional power generation protection you desire.
The water that cools the X-ray tube is provided by an external water chilling unit. It is temperature controlled and if it exceeds an identified temperature then the unit will fault and shut off to keep from damaging itself.
The typical cycle time is based on your target dose. Assuming you have product that is a density of 0.57 g/ml, being processed in a 11 cm diameter canister, 19 cm in height, with a dose uniformity ratio (DUR) of 1.3, the dose would be somewhere around 20 Gy per minute. Using this information, if your total target dose is 200 Gy, then it would take 10 minutes to deliver your dose.
Again, loading and unloading of the product is done from the top of the unit in between processing cycles. It is very easy to do and only takes a couple of minutes at most. Generally it can be done in less than one minute.
The speed of the rotating carousel can be changed to meet processing needs.
The canisters have locking lids that keep product from coming out of the canister. That said, we recommend putting your product in a second internal canister to ensure your product does not fall out of the processing canisters as they are not water or air tight.
In the standard RS 2400, the canisters are loaded from the top and they are processed in a horizontal carousel.
The dose on the surface is very low, radiation survey’s for the RS 2400 show the highest dose is 30 µR/hr.
The equipment can be configured for many different sized canisters. They can range from seven 7.5 cm diameter canisters to five 17.5 cm diameter canisters. Height generally is around 16.5 cm. The larger the canister diameter, the larger the DUR and lower dose rate.
The irradiation chamber is a lead box that is ½ inch ( 1.2 cm) thick.
