What are the differences between General Purpose Water Baths, Circulating Baths (Circulators), and Chillers?
a GP Water Bath
Besides for the obvious – the appearance – there are some key functionality and application differences. First of all, a water bath is basically a tank with a heater. It works on thermogradient heating, where heat is strongest at its source and there is less heat retained the farther you get from the source.
A Circulating Bath
Circulating Baths have pumps, enabling the circulating of fluid, therefore circulating heat – making the heat more uniform and precise. Circulating Baths also have the capability of connecting tubing to external connections so you can pump to an external application (either open loop or closed loop depending on the model of circulator). Circulating Baths also have a refrigeration option, unlike Water Baths, which allows them to cool and heat a fluid.
A Chiller
This ties into the third type of product – A Chiller. While both Refrigerated/Heated Circulating Baths and Chillers provide a cooling option, there are differences between them. Circulators provide a smaller footprint, more choices (controllers and reservoir sizes), a wider temperature range (-40° to 200°C for PolyScience models), more precision (up to ±0.005°C for PolyScience models) and they are typically connected to smaller equipment requiring low to moderate cooling capacity. They also allow for direct immersion of samples or external circulation. Chillers are larger, less precise (0.1° to 0.5°C for PolyScience models), have fixed reservoir sizes and a narrow range (-20° to 70°C for PolyScience models), and provide external circulation only. However, they can connect to larger equipment, provide greater cooling with strong pumps and can replace tap water cooling.
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