[Intro]
Alright, so I’m here right now with the King of Random in probably one of the coolest
shops I’ve ever seen.
[Grant] What’s up guys?
Welcome to my laboratory!
[Zack] For real, that’s exactly what it is.
This desk is phenomenal; it’s got so many power tools.
But there’s one special thing that I want to show you, and it blew my mind when I saw
it for the first time.
[Grant] Nobody knows about this yet, this is kind of like, behind the scenes.
[Zack] Top secret.
[Grant] Pre-video video.
[Zack] Okay, so liquid nitrogen.
Why do you need it?
[Grant] Why do you need liquid nitrogen?
Well, why do I need liquid nitrogen?
Or why does the world need liquid nitrogen?
[Zack] You, particularly.
[Grant] Me in particular?
I just like liquid nitrogen just for playing around.
It’s fun to play with because it can make things explode, it can make things freeze.
It’s one of those substances where it has properties that you don’t typically find
in normal everyday living because it’s so cold and the…the amount of energy it takes
to make it that cold – it’s not readily accessible.
Not very many people know where to find liquid nitrogen and so it’s just one of those cool
things.
It’s also very dangerous.
It can freeze your hands off.
It could kill you.
So I’m very much intrigued by things that can kill you.
[Zack] Which is weird.
It can kill you, it can freeze your hands off, but here we are in the basement of the
King of Random’s house.
[Grant] Nobody needs to know that!
[Zack] So show us how you make liquid nitrogen.
[Grant] Okay.
I’m going to run you very very briefly through the process of how I’m making liquid nitrogen
right now.
And if you listen very very carefully, you can hear a ticking noise in the background…clunk
clunk clunk clunk.
Let me show you what that noise is.
And over here…this is what we were working on today, me and Zack.
You’re going to see this popping up on my channel, but we have been playing with brains.
Gummy brains coming soon!
This is a spare room that I set up; it used to be a guest bedroom, now I use it for my
radiator, which is right down here.
Now this is basically just a giant glorified radiator that I built with a friend of mine
named Chris.
We have the radiator here.
We have water pumping through it, and it’s being cooled by a giant furnace fan that’s
pumping air out the back.
So air gets sucked in here, cools the water down, blows out here, and I put a little mesh
screen on it just so my kids can’t reach in and chop their fingers off.
We have a window open because this thing gets really hot and it circulates all the air.
So what we’re doing is we’re bringing in hot water, cooling it down, pumping that
hot air off, and then sending back cold water to what I’m about to show you next.
And here is what we have making that ticking noise.
This is a cryocooler powered by helium and I’ll tell you about how that works in just
a second.
See this little thing bumping up and down?
That’s very important.
So this is the really crude setup I’ve got going on right now.
It’s just what we have to work with.
This is my nitrogen generator, this is my nitrogen tank, this thing right here is called
a helium compressor, and that’s what’s pumping helium to the cryohead and back.
This is the stuff that gets really really hot.
This is the stuff that turns nitrogen into liquid nitrogen.
So our atmosphere where we’re living is about 79% nitrogen, so nitrogen is all around
us.
What this little machine here does is it takes the nitrogen out of the air; it pulls the
oxygen out of it and then cleans it so it’s a nice dry gas.
Dry nitrogen.
At that point we pump it into this tank where we can pressurize it and hold the tank full
of nitrogen.
Now I have a little regulator on here and this regulator just allows me to pump that
gas out at about 1 psi.
It travels through this pulley tube which runs over to the dewar and just gently vents
the gas on a very very cold heat sink.
That’s the tube that you see right here.
Now the second system, this is where the water and the radiator come in…I have a helium
compressor here.
It compresses helium and as the gasses compress, it heats up.
Well that cools down, and we run that helium over to this cryohead.
The whole purpose of the cryohead is to pump the gas in there and rapidly expand it.
And as it expands it gets very very cold and sucks heat out of the dewar.
The hot helium gas runs back to the helium compressor where it’s liquid cooled with
water and then pumping that water back up to the radiator to cool it back down so it
can come back down and repeat the process.
So this thing right here is just a glorified air conditioner that gets so cold that when
you push nitrogen gas onto it, it condenses and starts dripping down into the dewar.
[Zack] And so with all this system in place, how long would it take for this system to
fill up with liquid nitrogen?
[Grant] So you got to think, we’re just putting it in one drop at a time.
So this is a 35 liter dewar.
It’s going to take 2 to 3 weeks for it to fill up completely.
But we’ve already got about 15….
[Zack] How much do we have in there?
[Grant] I think it’s about half full right now, so we’re probably somewhere around
20 liters.
And to fill this up completely it would cost me about 170 dollars.
So making it at home, I don’t know if it really saves a lot of money…but who else
is making liquid nitrogen at home?
I just think it’s cool.
It’s a cool novelty affect.
[Zack] So you pretty much have an endless supply of liquid nitrogen right?
[Grant] Yeah, because we live in nitrogen.
We’re just cooling it down and turning it into a liquid, that’s all.
[Zack] Yeah because there’s nitrogen in the air that we breath.
[Grant] That’s right.
In fact, if I just let it running…if I let this thing keep running without the nitrogen
generator I would basically just be making liquid atmosphere, which would be nitrogen
and oxygen.
And I could use this liquid nitrogen to make liquid oxygen.
Basically make any kind of variety of gasses or liquids that we want.
It’s really effective and it’s great for cooling things down quickly.
[Zack] That’s interesting.
You also mentioned that there’s helium inside of that machine.
So is the helium ever used up, like you have to replenish that?
Or is the system completely like self-sustained?
[Grant] Good question.
No, the helium compressor is a closed system.
So all it’s doing is it’s taking that helium, it’s compressing it, and it’s
going through a heat exchanger to cool that gas down.
Then it’s running out to the cryo where it expands and heats up again, and then runs
back and just repeats that process.
It’s just exchanging heat – just like your air-conditioning unit does in your house.
This is just on a much higher level… and a lot more expensive.
[Zack] So as long as it has electricity it can keep making liquid nitrogen forever?
[Grant] Yep.
As long as there are no leaks in the helium compressor, that helium will stay in there
in a closed loop system indefinitely.
[Zack] That’s impressive.
It’s also impressive that he jerryrigged that whole system right here in his basement.
[Grant] That all came from 3 years of trying to find parts and piece them together from
University Surplus, EBay, Amazon, all over the place.
But we finally got it working.
This is my second batch of liquid nitrogen.
The first batch I used to freeze a heart on my channel and we smashed it.
[Zack] Oh that was cool.
[Grant] We kind of dissected a heart with liquid nitrogen.
So another abnormal use for it, but that’s how I roll.
And I will actually have a full tutorial on this liquid nitrogen generator going into
a little bit more depth with how it works on my channel in the near future.
So if you want to come check me out: King of Random on YouTube.
Got some cool content for you.
[Zack] Nice.
Thanks for giving us a behind the scenes look.
I was very very impressed.
Go check out his channel.
I’ll leave a link in the video description below.
And right up here in this section I’ll show you what we’ve been working on here on his
counter.
Thanks a ton for watching, I’ll see you around.