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DOE Earmarks $39 Million for Hydrogen Fuel Cell R&D

The US Department of Energy announced up to $39 million in available funding to support early stage R&D for innovative hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. Concept papers are due May 7, 2018, and full applications will be due June 12, 2018.

MIT Spinoff Faces Challenges for its Planned Fusion Power Plant

Commonwealth Fusion Systems, an MIT spinoff based in Cambridge, aims to bring a fusion power plant online within 15 years—a timeline faster by decades than other fusion machines. The project will face a number of challenges, according to an analysis by IEEE, including fabricating and testing a new class of...

Keeping the LHC Cold

The Large Hadron Collider is colder than interstellar space thanks to its cryogenic cooling system, with liquid helium pulsing through sophisticated plumbing that runs both inside and outside of the machine.

Link Discovered Between Superconductivity and Periodic Table

Scientists from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and Skoltech have discovered a general principle for calculating the superconductivity of hydrides based on the periodic table alone. The result, published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters came as the group explored the superconductivity of actinium hydrides.

EU Funds Research on “Cryosocieties”

The European Research Council has awarded a grant to researchers at Germany's Goethe University Frankfurt interested in understanding the social impacts of cryobiology. The research will focus on the freezing of umbilical cord blood as preparation for later regenerative therapies, the cryopreservation of egg cells for reproductive purposes and the...

New Capabilities at NSLS-II Set to Advance Materials Science

Scientists at NSLS-II's Hard X-ray Nanoprobe (HXN) beamline have demonstrated the beamline's ability to observe materials down to 10 nanometers, about one ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair. According to the team, this exceptionally high spatial resolution will enable scientists to "see" single molecules.

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Space Cryogenics

Space cryogenics is, somewhat obviously, the application of cryogenics to space exploration and science. The use of cryogenics in space optimizes the launching of vehicles, provides power and life support to spacecraft and is critical for many scientific observations.Space cryogenics has a number of challenges and has driven both pure...

Exergy

The science of thermodynamics plays a major role in cryogenics. It underlies the various refrigeration cycles, from Carnot to Brayton (Cold Facts Vol. 32 No. 2) and Joule-Thomson, is a fundamental part of the definition of terms such as coefficient of performance (Cold Facts Vol. 31 No. 1) and even...

Cryogenic Treatment

Cryogenic treatment is the process of cooling materials to cryogenic temperatures temporarily to improve their material properties at room temperature. This is distinct from cooling materials down to cryogenic temperatures to take advantage of phenomena such as superconductivity that only occur at cryogenic temperatures. Cryogenic treatment, sometimes also referred to...

Latest in Cryo Central

Air Separation and Liquefaction

by Nils Tellier, PE, President, EPSIM Corporation (CSA CSM) nils@epsim.us All illustrations courtesy EPSIM Corporation Background History of Air Separation and Liquefaction This section builds on a rich history of methods to develop deep refrigeration and cryogenic liquefaction during the 19th Century. You are encouraged to read Cryo Central’s History...

Bose-Einstein Condensate

A Bose-Einstein condensate, first proposed in 1925 by Albert Einstein based on work done by Satyendra Nath Bose (the same Bose from whom the term boson is derived), is a super-cold state of matter in which almost all of the individual atoms have “condensed” down to the lowest possible quantum...

Cold Technology for Pest Control

While it does not reach temperatures cold enough to be called cryogenic, carbon dioxide snow is at the heart of a new way of dealing with unwanted pests. It utilizes a quick freezing process that takes advantage of the properties of carbon dioxide snow and has a number of benefits...

Cryogenic Finishing

The following 3 articles discuss the uses and procedures of various type of cryogenic finishing. 1) By Robin A. Rhodes, Cryogenic Institute of New England, Inc. rrhodes@nitrofreeze.com Cryogenic Deflashing is employed to remove undesired residual mold flash that remains on molded parts after they are removed or ejected from the...

Latest in Ask the Experts

Power usage: cryogenic systems vs. regular refrigerators

A recent project highlighted to me that closed cycle cryogenic cooling systems use far more electrical power to reduce temperatures by a few watts than regular refrigerators. I am sure it must be something to do with the extra difficulty of removing the heat from the liquid nitrogen or similar...

Redundancy strategies for mechanical -80C freezers

I was wondering what kind of redundancy strategies are people using for their mechanical -80C freezers? I am aware of the following. Please add if you are doing something different. 1) 1 Backup freezer for every 10 freezers – Empty and maintained at -80C at all times 2) Backup C02...

Safety guidelines for handling cryo vessels of nitrogen

I am looking for any safety guidelines for handling cryogenic vessels of nitrogen indoors and outdoors. I am especially interested in recommendations for area monitors to detect leaks, flow detection devices, etc.

Method to move components in a cryogenic environment

Does anyone know of a method with which to reliably move components in a cryogenic environment? We are interested in moving detectors in a cryogenically cooled (2K) vacuum chamber, which is contained within a larger cryostat/isolation vacuum with thermal shields. As the desired horizontal or vertical displacement is between 10...

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