Help! Our lab had a box open and spill into our liquid nitrogen tank. The vials all sank and are in the bottom of the tank which is otherwise in active use. Does anyone know of a trick for retrieving the vials short of transferring all to another tank and emptying it. We do not have a tank that is not is use so this would be very inconvenient. The cells are needed and took a fair bit of effort and expense to create. It is a medium size VWR tank. There is a raised portion in the middle of the bottom that keeps the cannisters to the side so the vials are most likely in the doughnut shaped lower area around the outside of the floor of the tank. Thanks for your thoughts on this.
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but we had to 'borrow' a shop tank, and beg space in the neighboring labs to do this. We did try using one of those 'grabber'/leaf picker things, but the donut+ residual -198dC foiled it!
as mentioned earlier one option is to take out the liquid nitrogen in another container and try to take out