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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

Liquid Hydrogen

Hydrogen becomes a liquid at 20K and 1 bar. Liquid hydrogen (LH2) is an important substance in industry, transportation and research. Industrial uses of hydrogen include applications in the electronics, glass, chemical and metal processing fields. In these applications, the hydrogen is generally used as a room temperature gas but...

Superconducting Radiofrequency Cavities

Superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavities represent an important application of cryogenics and superconductivity. SRF cavities are a technology for accelerating charged particle beams via the transfer of radiofrequency (RF) energy to the beams via resonant structures. As such, they are frequently found in large particle accelerators used for scientific research....

Thermal Radiation Shields

Actively cooled thermal radiation shields are a common feature of cryostats whose lowest temperature is less than 77K. These shields, which typically operate at temperatures between that of LN2 and 40K, block thermal radiation from higher temperatures from reaching lower temperature cryogenic components or fluids. Since the heat radiated from...

Latest in Cryo Central

Wind Tunnels

Dr. Robert Kilgore The development of the cryogenic wind tunnel is one of many significant breakthroughs in both cryogenics and wind-tunnel technology made during the past millennium. Interest in the development of high-speed commercial and military aircraft resulted in a review of problems of flow simulation in transonic wind tunnels...

History of Cryogenics

From the Fall 1999 issue of Cold Facts magazine Millennium Breakthroughs A variety of CSA members give different perspectives on the past millennium: What were the most significant breakthroughs in cryogenics during the past millennium? Prof. R.G. Scurlock, Kryos Technology, scurlock@soton.ac.uk (“Breakthrough” = way through obstacles — Oxford English Dictionary)...

Cryobiology

Andreas Sputtek Past President Society for Cryobiology sputtek@uke.uni-hamburg.de or http://www.sputtek.de/. The word cryobiology (from the Greek words “cryo” = cold, “bios” = life, and “logos” = science) literally signifies the science of life at low temperatures. In practice, this field comprises the study of any biological material or system (e.g.,...

Cryogenic Insulation

James E. Fesmire Cryogenics Test Laboratory NASA Kennedy Space Center james.e.fesmire@nasa.gov Introduction In today’s world, the use of cryogenics and low-temperature refrigeration is taking a more and more significant role. From the food industry, transportation, energy, and medical applications to the Space Shuttle, cryogenic liquids must be stored, handled, and...

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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