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

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

Regenerators

Regenerators or regenerative heat exchangers are a key component of cryocoolers such as pulse tube cryocoolers (Cold Facts, August 2014). Regenerator performance greatly affects the coefficient of performance of cryocoolers. Improvements in regenerator design and, in particular, regenerator materials have been an important factor in the improvement of the performance...

Pulse Tube Cryocoolers

The development of pulse tube cryocoolers has been a significant topic of research and development over the past 20 or so years. Pulse tube cryocoolers have a number of advantages over other types of cryocoolers and are now available commercially. In order to understand pulse tube cryocoolers, it’s best to...

Thermal Expansion

Thermal expansion refers to the change in size (length or volume) that a material undergoes as its temperature changes. In cryogenic systems this effect can be quite large and must be allowed for in the design. In isotropic materials, which include most engineering materials, the thermal expansion is the same...

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?

CATEGORIES