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Cryomech’s Banner Year in Review

2019 has proven to be a banner year for Cryomech (CSA CSM). The company celebrated many business achievements, made unique innovations, and participated in events in the local community. They experienced their largest ever order intake in one month, shipped the largest single order in company history, shipped the most...

Linde Starts Up New Air Separation Plant, Further Expanding Capacity in the US Gulf Coast

Linde (CSA CSM) announced on February 12 that it has started up a new air separation unit in Freeport TX as part of a long-term agreement to supply MEGlobal's new ethylene glycol plant in Oyster Creek TX. The new ASU will safely and reliably supply oxygen and nitrogen to MEGlobal...

Making High Temperature Superconductivity Disappear to Understand Its Origin

Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have collected evidence suggesting that a purely electronic mechanism causes copper-oxygen compounds to conduct electricity without resistance at temperatures well above absolute zero by studying a well-known cuprate containing layers made of bismuth oxide, strontium oxide, calcium and copper oxide (BSCCO).

What a Pair: Coupled Quantum Dots May Offer a New Way to Store Quantum Information

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have for the first time created and imaged a novel pair of quantum dots—tiny islands of confined electric charge that act like interacting artificial atoms. Such “coupled” quantum dots could serve as a robust quantum bit, or...

Transformative ‘Green’ Accelerator Achieves World’s First 8-pass Full Energy Recovery

Scientists from Cornell University and the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) have successfully demonstrated the world’s first capture and reuse of energy in a multi turn particle accelerator, where electrons are accelerated and decelerated in multiple stages and transported at different energies through a single beamline....

The Future of Particle Accelerators May Be Autonomous

Operators at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) particle accelerator, part of SLAC National Laboratory at Stanford University in California, looked into how they were spending their time managing the machine. They tracked the hours they spent on tasks like investigating problems and orchestrating new configurations of the particle beam...

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Dewar

A dewar is a type of cryostat named after Sir James Dewar, the researcher who first developed the concept of a vacuum insulated container with silvered walls to reflect thermal radiation. Dewar was the first to liquefy hydrogen, and he created the device to store his discovery. The thermos bottle...

Stirling and Gifford-McMahon Cryocoolers

Stirling and Gifford-McMahon (GM) cryocoolers are two of the most commonly used cryocoolers in cryogenics. Both devices have a significant industrial base and operate at a wide range of temperatures and capacities. The thermodynamic cycles for both of these cryocoolers are quite similar. The Stirling cycle consists of a compressor,...

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)

A significant commercial application of cryogenics is the liquefaction, transport and storage of natural gas. Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is generally 95 percent methane with a few percent ethane and much lower concentrations of propane and butane. LNG liquefies at 111.6 K. Unlike many applications of cryogenics, the motivation for...

Latest in Cryo Central

Cryogenic Treatment of Materials

F.J. Diekman Controlled Thermal Processing, Inc. info@metal-wear.com Cryogenic Processing (also called cryogenic treatment, and incorrectly “cryogenic tempering”) is a process that uses cryogenic temperatures to modify materials to enhance their performance. Cryogenic Processing involves the slow reduction in temperature of the material to at least -300°F (-185°C) and holding the...

Cryogenics in Space

Peter Kittel University of California-Berkeley pkittel@cal.berkeley.edu Space Cryogenics is the application of cryogenics to space missions. These applications fall into two broad areas, supporting space science missions and supporting the space transportation infrastructure. Science applications: The atmosphere is opaque to much of the electro-magnetic spectrum. In space, the absence of...

Cryosurgery

Review of Cryosurgery Boris Rubinsky, PhD Hebrew University School of Science and Engineering Research Center for Biomedical Engineering 78b Ross Building Givat Ram, Jerusalem 91904 Israel rubinsky@cs.huji.ac.il as published in Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering, August 2000, Vol. 2, pp. 157-187. Abstract: Cryosurgery is a surgical technique that employs freezing...

Liquefied Natural Gas

Liquefied Natural Gas as it relates to the Field of Cryogenics John W. Bonn VJ Systems, LLC johnbonn@vjsystems-lic.com Today the world is looking for a cleaner fuel and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plays a large part in achieving this goal. LNG in a liquid form is at -162°C (-259°F) and...

Latest in Ask the Experts

Power usage: cryogenic systems vs. regular refrigerators

A recent project highlighted to me that closed cycle cryogenic cooling systems use far more electrical power to reduce temperatures by a few watts than regular refrigerators. I am sure it must be something to do with the extra difficulty of removing the heat from the liquid nitrogen or similar...

Redundancy strategies for mechanical -80C freezers

I was wondering what kind of redundancy strategies are people using for their mechanical -80C freezers? I am aware of the following. Please add if you are doing something different. 1) 1 Backup freezer for every 10 freezers – Empty and maintained at -80C at all times 2) Backup C02...

Safety guidelines for handling cryo vessels of nitrogen

I am looking for any safety guidelines for handling cryogenic vessels of nitrogen indoors and outdoors. I am especially interested in recommendations for area monitors to detect leaks, flow detection devices, etc.

Method to move components in a cryogenic environment

Does anyone know of a method with which to reliably move components in a cryogenic environment? We are interested in moving detectors in a cryogenically cooled (2K) vacuum chamber, which is contained within a larger cryostat/isolation vacuum with thermal shields. As the desired horizontal or vertical displacement is between 10...

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