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Air Liquide Signs Two Long-Term Oxygen Supply Agreements with Marathon Petroleum Corporation

Air Liquide advanced Technologies (CSA CSM) has signed two long-term supply agreements with Marathon Petroleum Company for a total of up to 900 tons of oxygen per day for Marathon Petroleum’s Refineries on the American Gulf Coast.

Shaw Prize in Astronomy Awarded to Edward Stone

Former Jet Propulsion Laboratory director Edward Stone has been awarded the prestigious Shaw Prize in Astronomy for his leadership in the Voyager project. The Shaw Prize is awarded annually in three categories: Astronomy, Life Science and Medicine, and Mathematical Sciences, and comes with a monetary prize of $1.2 million. Stone...

Cooling LSST, the World’s Largest Digital Camera

When it’s ready in 2022, LSST will image almost all of the sky visible from its vantage point on a Chilean mountain, Cerro Pachón, every few nights for a decade to make an astronomical “movie” of unprecedented proportions. To keep the camera cold enough, engineers needed to create a customized...

Microgravity Zero Boiloff Tank (ZBOT) Experiments Provide Data for Pressure Control Systems

Zero boiloff tank experiments are currently underway on the International Space Station. The rise in human planetary missions highlights the need for long-duration cryogenic storage used for propellant and life support liquids. The effective implementation and optimization of these systems is an enabling technology within the critical path of future...

Ultracold Atoms Could Provide 2D Window to Exotic 1D Physics

In a recent paper in Physical Review Letters, Matthew Foster and Seth Davis, theoretical physicists at Rice University, proposed an experiment to measure fractionalization not in electrons but in atoms so cold they follow the same quantum rules that dictate how electrons behave in quantum materials—a growing class of materials...

LIGO and Virgo Detect Neutron Star Smash-Ups

On April 25, the National Science Foundation's Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the European-based Virgo detector registered gravitational waves from what appears likely to be a crash between two neutron stars—the dense remnants of massive stars that previously exploded. One day later, the LIGO-Virgo network spotted another candidate source...

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Mixed Refrigerant Cycles

Most cryogenic refrigeration systems, both large scale systems and cryocoolers, use helium as a working fluid. There are a number of advantages to helium, not the least of which is that helium remains a fluid down to the lowest achievable temperatures. In order to freeze helium, pressures of over 20...

Fountain Pumps and He II Phase Separators

Helium II (He II), the second liquid phase of the 4He isotope described in this column in Cold Facts Spring 2010 (http://2csa.us/he2), can be modeled as consisting of two interpenetrating fluids. One, the superfluid component, has zero viscosity and entropy and the other, the normal fluid component, has nonzero viscosity...

Turboexpanders

A vital technology in the refrigerators and liquefiers described in Cold Facts Volume 31 Number 3 is that of turboexpanders. These devices are rotating machines in which the process fluid (e.g., helium) does work against the turboexpander while moving from high pressure to a lower pressure and thus is cooled....

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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