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Hyundai Nexo Sets Hydrogen Fuel Cell Distance Record

Celebrity explorer Bertrand Piccard drove Hyundai’s Nexo SUV 484 miles across France in November, setting a new world record for the longest distance traveled in a hydrogen-powered vehicle on a single tank. Within the category of zero-emissions options, the hydrogen fuel cell is constantly being eclipsed by electric power. But...

Jefferson Lab Scientists Are Designing Accelerators that Could Help Clean the Environment

Physicists at Jefferson Laboratory are working on two accelerator designs they hope could change water treatment. It’s been 30 years since a pilot project in Miami-Dade County found that blasting wastewater with electrons could clean it up—from microorganisms to harsh chemicals. Fay Hannon is designing a low-energy, portable accelerator for...

Cryogenics Secures Volatile Car Batteries in Transit

Early in December, researchers from Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) at the University of Warwick UK, in collaboration with Jaguar Land Rover engineers, froze batteries with liquid nitrogen. Research suggests this would allow lithium car batteries—costly and dangerous to move—to be transported safely in a much cheaper and environmentally friendly way.

Electronic Map Reveals ‘Rules of the Road’ in Superconductor

In a study published in the American Physical Society journal Physical Review X (PRX) in early December, Rice University physicist Ming Yi and colleagues offer up a band structure map for iron selenide, a material that has long puzzled physicists because of its structural simplicity and behavioral complexity. The “roadmap,”...

Tour ITER in Virtual Reality

ITER, the world’s largest fusion tokamak, is currently under construction in southern France. Now, operational facilities are under construction including the First Plasma plant and tokamak building. The consortium, comprising representatives from 35 nations, has introduced an interactive worksite tour to keep the public informed on site progress and encourage...

European Space Agency Approves Record Budget To Meet New Challenges

European Space Agency (ESA) members approved a record $15.97 billion budget in late November in Seville, Spain, to secure Europe's position in space exploration as the United States and China press ahead. Funding will allow ESA a full series of programs and additional scientific work including increased Earth observation to...

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Two-Phase Flows

Two-phase flows are those flows in which there is a mixture of two physical states (solid, liquid or vapor). In cryogenic applications, such flows are almost always a mixture of a cryogenic liquid along with its corresponding vapor. A mixture of liquid helium and helium vapor would be a typical...

Supercritical Fluids

A supercritical fluid is defined as a substance whose temperature and pressure exceed those of its critical point. Every pure substance has a critical point that is defined in thermodynamic space by a critical temperature and a corresponding critical pressure. For example, the critical point for helium has a critical...

Brayton Cycle

The Brayton cycle is one of the many thermodynamic cycles used to generate cooling at cryogenic temperatures. Strictly speaking, when referring to cooling we should call this the reverse Brayton cycle as the original Brayton cycle describes the process of power generation or propulsion via a gas turbine. In many...

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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