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Nikola Corporation Breaks Ground on Arizona Manufacturing Facility

On July 23, Nikola Corporation, a global transportation company specializing in zero-emission vehicles and infrastructure solutions, broke ground on a 1 million-square-foot manufacturing facility in Coolidge AZ. The future zero-emission facility, sitting on approximately 430 acres, will have the capacity to produce 35,000 Class 8 commercial semi-trucks annually, with the...

Announcing SciFest All Access

Part of the USA Science & Engineering Festival, SciFest All Access will take place online from September 16-23, 2020. Attendees of all ages will be able to engage directly with sponsors and exhibitors to experience 100+ virtual STEM activities. This free virtual event will be a graphical depiction of the...

Seeking the Sounds of Superfluids at Swinburne University

An Australian study headed by Swinburne University and published in late March in Physical Review Letters examines the propagation of energy as sound waves in a quantum gas, revealing for the first time strong variations in the nature of sound waves as a function of temperature. Sound waves reveal the...

The Space Station’s Coolest Experiment Gets Astronaut-Assisted Upgrade

ASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory, a facility for fundamental physics experiments on the International Space Station, underwent a major hardware upgrade with the help of astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir in January. By chilling atom clouds to just above absolute zero—the lowest temperature matter can reach—Cold Atom Lab enables scientists...

CERN Demonstrator Magnet Produces a Record Magnetic Field

In February at CERN, a demonstrator magnet using superconducting niobium-tin, cooled to 1.9 kelvins achieved a peak magnetic field of 16.5 tesla on the conductor, exceeding the previous record of 16.2 tesla from 2015. The demonstrator, known as an enhanced Racetrack Model Coil (eRMC) magnet, consists of two superimposed flat...

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Adiabatic Demagnetization Refrigeration

Reaching temperatures below 1K requires different techniques than the various helium gas cycles found in large scale refrigeration plants and small cryocoolers. One of these techniques is Adiabatic Demagnetization Refrigeration (ADR). This technique takes advantage of the fact that the entropy of paramagnetic materials in a magnetic field is lower than...

Cryogen-Free

A cryogen is any fluid that operates at cryogenic temperatures (below roughly 150K – 120K). Using this definition, helium gas at 40K is a cryogen. Another more restrictive definition is to use cryogen to refer specifically to liquids at cryogenic temperatures. This is generally how it is used in the...

Cryostats and Cryocoolers

A cryostat is any device designed to maintain things (including fluids) at cryogenic temperatures. In general usage, cryostats tend to be passive devices rather than providing active cooling. In this usage, cryostats keep things cold by thermally isolating them from room temperature. This generally is accomplished by a combination of...

Magnetic Levitation

From http://www.superconductors.org. Magnetic-levitation is an application where superconductors perform extremely well. Transport vehicles such as trains can be made to “float” on strong superconducting magnets, virtually eliminating friction between the train and its tracks. Not only would conventional electromagnets waste much of the electrical energy as heat, they would have...

Superconductivity

From Superpower website. History of Superconductivity Superconductivity was discovered in 1911 by the Dutch physicist, Heike Kammerlingh Onnes when he was able to liquefy helium by cooling it to 4 Kelvin, or -452°F. This enabled him to cool other materials close to absolute zero and investigate their electrical properties. He...

Medical Applications of Cryogenics

Neutron Therapy Cryogenics is at the heart of nuclear accelerators. Accelerators such as Fermilab’s Tevatron make neutron therapy for cancer possible. From Fermilab Today 4/20/09: Fermilab currently offers neutron therapy. But staff at Fermilab designed and built the proton accelerator used by the nation’s first hospital-based treatment center to use...

Nuclear Physics

Al Zeller National Superconducting Cyclotron Lab (NSCL) at Michigan State University zeller@nscl.msu.edu Cryogenics has a long history in nuclear physics. The technology has its origins in the use of cold traps for maintaining a vacuum, which is required to prevent beam loss and for generating high voltages used in acceleration....

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...