Cold Facts Digital – The go-to place for Cryogenics and Superconductivity

National Geographic Introduces the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment

Take an informative written journey around ADMX with National Geographic writer Michael Greshko, who visited as "unassuming facility in northern Seattle" and was taken in by "a supercooled tangle of tubes and wires...poised to remake the world."

Celebrate Dark Matter Day 2018

Institutions around the world will celebrate Dark Matter Day throughout October, with events highlighting experiments that could bring us closer to solving the cosmic riddle of dark matter. The Interactions Collaboration, an international community of particle physics communication specialists, is the celebration's sponsor. Information on local events is available on...

Dr. Ursula Bassler Elected President of CERN Council

CERN's council has announced the election of Dr. Ursula Bassler as its 23rd president. She replaces professor Sijbrand de Jong on January 1, 2019, and will serve for a period of at least one year.

Stirling Technology Used at Italy’s First LNG Production Facility

DH Industries BV, a CSA CSM in the Netherlands, announced that Italy's first LNG production facility, using DH's Stirling technology, officially opened on September 27.

Texas Center for Superconductivity Announces New Director

The Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston (TcSUH) has named physicist Zhifeng Ren as its new director.

Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman Dies at 96

Leon Lederman, a Nobel Prize winner who served as Fermilab’s director from 1978 to 1989, died at age 96 on October 3 at a nursing home in Rexburg ID. Lederman's overall career spanned more than 60 years, a time period where he was known as both a trail-blazing researcher responsible...

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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