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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

Stability

Stability refers to the ability of a device employing superconductors to remain in its superconducting state after part of the superconductor transitions back to its normal conducting state due to a disturbance. While the concept can apply to many superconducting devices—transmission lines, generators, motors, etc.—it is most commonly considered in...

Cable-in-Conduit Conductors

Cable-in-Conduit Conductors (CICC) are a common form of superconducting cable used in large-scale applications. There are several varieties of CICCs, but they all consist of many small, stabilized superconducting wires contained within a conduit through which a coolant (typically supercritical He II) flows. Figure 1 shows the cross section of...

Bayonet Coupling

A bayonet coupling is a demountable joint that allows for quick and easy connection and disconnection of cryogenic components, including transfer lines, cryostats, liquefiers and refrigerators. Bayonets provide a number of advantages, chief among them the ability to connect and disconnect the bayonets while components they connect are still at...

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?

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