Cold Facts Digital – The go-to place for Cryogenics and Superconductivity

US Energy Secretary Brouillette Praises National Labs’ Contributions

US Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette speaks after the groundbreaking of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Grid Storage Launchpad project in Benton Country WA on August 14. The project is of a small group being hosted at PNNL designed to make the country’s energy grid stronger, more flexible and secure. Read...

Could You Make a Snowball of Neutrinos?

Published on July 7 in The New York Times, cartoonist, author, engineer and physicist Randall Munroe, examines the physics of neutrinos while answering what it would take to create a neutrino "snowball." The science of if (and why) in this installment of "What If?" may surprise you.

Cryogenics Makes the European Spallation Source a Hot Property in Neutron Science

Cryogenics is a core enabling technology at the European Spallation Source, a next-generation neutron-science facility under construction in Sweden. In a July 6 Physics World interview, Joe McEntee talks to John G. Weisend II, CSA board chairman and group leader for specialized technical services at ESS, about the secrets of...

Two Construction Projects Reach Major Milestones at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

On July 22, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (CSA CSM) simultaneously achieved two construction milestones: the groundbreaking for its PIP-II cryoplant building and the site dedication of the laboratory’s Integrated Engineering Research Center. The two projects help usher in a new era of science and support cutting-edge research, including the international...

Ball Aerospace Delivers Cryostat for GUSTO

Early this year, Ball Aerospace delivered a cryostat to the University of Arizona for NASA’s Galactic/Extragalactic Ultralong-Duration Balloon Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory (GUSTO)—a long-duration balloon mission that will map out parts of the Milky Way and Large Magellanic Cloud galaxies to determine the life cycle of interstellar gas, witness the formation...

CERN Council Endorses Building Future Circular Collider

The CERN Council announced on June 19 their endorsement of the idea of building the Future Circular Collider—a new, larger circular supercollider. The move is the first step toward building a 100 TeV, 100-kilometer circumference collider around Geneva. As part of the vote, the group also approved the launch of...

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Regenerators

Regenerators or regenerative heat exchangers are a key component of cryocoolers such as pulse tube cryocoolers (Cold Facts, August 2014). Regenerator performance greatly affects the coefficient of performance of cryocoolers. Improvements in regenerator design and, in particular, regenerator materials have been an important factor in the improvement of the performance...

Pulse Tube Cryocoolers

The development of pulse tube cryocoolers has been a significant topic of research and development over the past 20 or so years. Pulse tube cryocoolers have a number of advantages over other types of cryocoolers and are now available commercially. In order to understand pulse tube cryocoolers, it’s best to...

Thermal Expansion

Thermal expansion refers to the change in size (length or volume) that a material undergoes as its temperature changes. In cryogenic systems this effect can be quite large and must be allowed for in the design. In isotropic materials, which include most engineering materials, the thermal expansion is the same...

Latest in Cryo Central

Magnets

From “Superconductivity: Present and Future Applications” by the Coalition for the Commercial Application of Superconductors. Particle physics uses accelerators to recreate the conditions of the early universe in an attempt to piece together the complex puzzle of how we got to where we are today. These huge machines are used...

Energy Storage

From “Superconductivity: Present and Future Applications” by the Coalition for the Commercial Application of Superconductors. With power lines increasingly congested and prone to instability, strategic injection of brief bursts of real power can play a crucial role in maintaining grid reliability. Small-scale Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES) systems, based on...

Astronomy

ASTRONOMY IN SPACE by Peter V. Mason, retired, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Visiting Associate, California Institute of Technology. Pmason@alumni.caltech.edu In thinking about the reasons to perform astronomy in space, we first consider the effect of the earth’s atmosphere. On a scale of decreasing energy, gamma rays, cosmic rays, X-rays and...

Cryocoolers

What is a Cryocooler? A mechanism that can extract heat from an object (cooler) and by doing so draw its temperature down below approximately 150 Kelvin (cryo). — (Courtesy Dr. Willy Gully) What is the difference between a Cryocooler and a Cryostat? A cryostat is any device designed to maintain...

Latest in Ask the Experts

An Issue of Pressure and Flow Rate in a Supply Tank

Please help solve this problem: A supply tank requires a vaporizer to generate sufficient pressure to pump stored fluid up into a vehicle or tank. The available head is limited as the tank level falls and it is important to minimize the system pressure drop to maintain the desired flow...

Using MLI on VJ Line Joints or Cryo Storage Tanks

When installing Multi Layer Insulation (MLI) blankets on VJ line joints or cryo storage tanks should they be wrapped and tied down tight or loose? These are usually pre-cut to size. Also should they have an access hole at the point of where the molecular sieve is installed to help...

Separated layers of ice over a pipe

I want to know that why there are different layers of ice over a pipe carrying a cryogenic fluid, each layer separated with clear marks / lines? What do these layers signify?

Using nitrogen as a cryogen

Is it possible to achieve -200˚C using nitrogen as a cryogen?

CATEGORIES