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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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Joule-Thomson Effect

The Joule-Thomson (JT) effect is a thermodynamic process that occurs when a fluid expands from high pressure to low pressure at constant enthalpy (an isenthalpic process). Such a process can be approximated in the real world by expanding a fluid from high pressure to low pressure across a valve. Under...

Current Leads

One of the challenges of using superconducting magnets is the connection of the magnet to a room temperature power supply. This is accomplished via current leads. The trick is that current leads should ideally have a low heat leak, since they connect room temperature to cryogenic temperature, while at the...

Multilayer Insulation

Multilayer insulation (also referred to as superinsulation) is a key component in the reduction of heat leak to cryogenic systems due to thermal radiation. MLI consists of a series of uncooled reflective surfaces placed in the vacuum space between two surfaces, one warmer than the other. Generally speaking, for ideal...

Food Processing

Cryogenics and Food The industrial gas industry provides a host of products and services related to food. The various gases have useful and sometimes fascinating applications in food industry. “The food industry is not a homogenous industry. The needs of customers processing hamburger vs. poultry vs. strawberries vs. seafood, for...

Primary Standards

Elie K. Track Hypres, Inc. elie@hypres.com http://www.hypres.com/ Primary standards involve the exact definition and realization of units of measurement for various quantities, time, length, mass, voltage, resistance, current, etc. International agreements based on the latest scientific knowledge define those units, and their realizations vary depending on the unit itself. For...

Shrink Fitting

Robin A. Rhodes Cryogenic Institute of New England, Inc. rrhodes@nitrofreeze.com Shrink fitting, (or “compression fitting” as it is sometimes called), is a method used to insert a pin or bushing into a housing or other assembly requiring an extremely tight tolerance fit. It can be used as an alternative to...

Telecommunications

From the Winter 2004 issue of Cold Facts magazine The recent M-Calc IV — 4th Industry Assessment workshop discussing military and commercial applications for low-cost cryocoolers, held in November in San Diego, highlighted progress being made in cryogenics as applied in telecommunications. The reliability and long lifetime of projects now...

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...