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Boeing and Rolls Royce Back Self-creating Liquid Oxygen Engine

UK-based Reaction Engines Limited REL has raised an additional £26.5 million in funding from Boeing HorizonX Ventures and Rolls Royce for its SABRE engine project. Researchers plan to begin testing the engine in 2020. Engineers designed it to produce its own liquid oxygen by cooling air entering the engine during...

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...

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Dewar

A dewar is a type of cryostat named after Sir James Dewar, the researcher who first developed the concept of a vacuum insulated container with silvered walls to reflect thermal radiation. Dewar was the first to liquefy hydrogen, and he created the device to store his discovery. The thermos bottle...

Stirling and Gifford-McMahon Cryocoolers

Stirling and Gifford-McMahon (GM) cryocoolers are two of the most commonly used cryocoolers in cryogenics. Both devices have a significant industrial base and operate at a wide range of temperatures and capacities. The thermodynamic cycles for both of these cryocoolers are quite similar. The Stirling cycle consists of a compressor,...

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)

A significant commercial application of cryogenics is the liquefaction, transport and storage of natural gas. Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is generally 95 percent methane with a few percent ethane and much lower concentrations of propane and butane. LNG liquefies at 111.6 K. Unlike many applications of cryogenics, the motivation for...

Latest in Cryo Central

Cryogenic Electronics

Randall Kirschman, consulting physicist, Mountain View, California ExtElect@gmail.com Cryogenic electronics—the operation of electronic devices, circuits, and systems at cryogenic temperatures—has been a valuable technology for decades. Cryogenic electronics (also referred to as low-temperature electronics, or cold electronics) can be based on semiconductive devices, on superconductive devices, or on a combination...

Particle Physics: High Energy Physics

Cryogenics and High-Energy Physics 1. From symmetry magazine: http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/cms/?pid=1000627: Cryogenics is the study of how materials behave at temperatures near absolute zero. In high-energy particle accelerators, such frigid temperatures reduce the electrical resistance of wires in superconducting magnets, increasing the magnet strength and allowing faster particle acceleration. The same holds...

HTS Degaussing Systems

From the Spring 2009 issue of Cold Facts (Volume 25, Number 2): Thanks to a joint project by the US Navy and a number of industry partners, high temperature superconducting (HTS) technology is now at the heart of an advanced degaussing system aboard the USS Higgins at the naval station...

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

From http://www.superconductors.org: An area where superconductors can perform a life-saving function is in the field of biomagnetism. Doctors need a non-invasive means of determining what’s going on inside the human body. By impinging a strong superconductor-derived magnetic field into the body, hydrogen atoms that exist in the body’s water and...

Latest in Ask the Experts

Presence of alloying elements in tool steels

I want to expand my knowledge of cryogenics in general and tool steels in particular. Specifically, I am keenly interested in learning about the presence of alloying elements in tool steels and how their presence in various combinations affects the performance of tool steels after cryogenic treatment.

Pros and cons of barcoding samples

I was wondering if I could ask for input on pros and cons of barcoding. We are in the process of trying to decide if we should start barcoding our samples and I’m just not sure if this is feasible for our organization. We have numerous sites all over the...

Purity level of helium gas stream in cryo plant purification system

I would like to know what the principal methods and the relative instrumentation to check the purity level of helium gas stream in the purification system of a common helium cryogenic plant are. What principles are these instruments based on? And what are their principal characteristics?

LN2 for cryopreservation through controlled rate freezing of samples

I am the cryogenic specialist for a stem cell bank in Greece. I am trying to find the minimum requirements (purity, humidity, etc.) of liquid nitrogen for cryopreservation through controlled rate freezing of biological samples.

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