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Cooling units that use refrigeration or other cooling mechanism (e.g., ice, solid state thermoelectric systems, heat exchangers) to cool animal urine (usually at or below 7 degrees C or 45 degrees F) collected in the basin of a metabolic cage specially designed for small laboratory research animals (e.g., mice, rats, guinea pigs, rabbits). The dedicated collection basin under the metabolic cage can usually collect 2 to 5 mL in a 24 hour period and plugs into the cooling unit to keep the urine cool. Animal urine cooling units contain a cooling device, pumps to circulate air or other fluids, and programmable controls and displays for temperature, pressure, or flow rate; some feature alarms to sound alerts when system functions do not meet set parameters. The animal urine cooling unit may have hoses or coils to chill one or more urine collection basins attached to a metabolic cage and may come in table top models or larger units that supply cooling to a rack system containing several metabolic cages.
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