What manufactures won’t tell you about electric cryotherapy machines.
Most manufacturers will only tell you about the pros of electric cryotherapy systems. I’d like to take a moment to instead focus on the cons of electric cryotherapy. Our goal is to not only to provide stellar products and services, but to edify you on your choices. Here at Artica Systems, we are on your team.
Let’s start with the Achille’s heel of any refrigeration system – humidity. It’s everywhere. It’s outdoors, it’s in the cryochamber room, and it’s inside the chamber. High humidity and temperatures outdoors will decrease the cooling capacity of any refrigeration system. Just like an air conditioner struggles on a hot day, your cryo system will too. Our machines have multiple systems in place to help mitigate this, but it’s never a non-issue. It doesn’t matter how fancy your system is, heat needs to eventually leave the building. Hot, humid air has a pesky knack in limiting heat transfer. For a 101 on heat transfer, read my other blog coming soon.
Another thing to consider is noise. Unlike typical nitrogen systems, an electric system requires compressors. Compressors make noise. A lot of noise. The ideal scenario is placing the cryo engine out of ear shot of the main chamber, but this is not always possible (i.e. large open spaces, limited room, etc.). The scroll compressors we use in our systems are quiet and extremely efficient. We also attenuate the sound with internal sound dampening, limiting high frequenccies, making Ethos the quietest system on the market at 66 dBA. It sounds much like the hum of a refrigerator vs the drone of a vaccum cleaner like some of our competitors.
When using nitrogen, the amount of sessions you can achieve per hour is only limited by the amount of people you can have in line waiting for their turn (and how much gas you have available that day!). Because the expansion of nitrogen is so cold and its capacity to cool is only limited by the how much you can feed into the chamber - it drops temperature very rapidly and is highly repeatable. Electric systems work a little differently. Electric cryotherapy utilizes a refrigeration circuit, often multiple, to achieve cooling. You can kind of think of it as an “AC unit on steroids.” As such, it is continuously running to maintain cryo temperatures in your chamber. When a person uses the chamber they dump a massive amount of heat into, and the chamber, in turn, rapidly cools their skin. However, once they leave, the system is still trying to maintain temperatures and the resulting delay is what we call rebound. Rebound is the time it takes for your system to return to cryo temperatures after a user has exited. The rate at which this happens is dependent on various things, but overall it has to do with the performance and desired temperature. The colder the chamber, the longer the rebound. Period.
Ethos uses advanced vapor injection circuits and our patent pending CryoBoost(TM) technology to achieve rebounds of 2-3min. During testing where we had everyone line up primed to take a session, we were able to run 9 sessions in a single hour. If you are running this many sessions per hour, I tip my hat to you - you are killing it!
Lastly, I want to talk about a very serious matter and the proverbial “elephant in the room” - temperature. Let’s just say that false temperature claims hurt buyers, clients, and the market. Our goal is to induce an autonomic nervous system response, not compare boat sizes. We want repeatable, efficient, safe experiences for our users so that we can help our clients and keep this market alive. I can’t wait till you see your Artica Systems cryotherapy machine in action. It will never leave your clients wanting more.
