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Alstom Unveils Hydrogen Powered Train

Alstom, a leader in integrated railway systems, unveiled a hydrogen-powered passenger train during an event at InnoTrans, a railway industry trade fair. The new train, Coradia iLint, is modeled after Alstom's diesel operated Coradia Lint 54, but will feature a CO2 emission-free hydrogen fuel cell engine. The first delivery is...

AMSC and Nexans Expand Relationship

AMSC, an energy solutions provider serving the wind and power grid industry, and Nexans Deutschland GmbH (CSA CSM), an expert in the cable industry, have announced a partnership to market and sell AMSC’s Resilient Electric Grid (REG) system and other high performance superconductor power cables in the US and Canada.

Open Access Initiative SCOAP3 Extended Through 2019

CERN has announced the continuation of the global SCOAP3 open access initiative for at least three more years. SCOAP3, the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics, is an innovative partnership of over 3,000 libraries, funding agencies and research organizations from 44 countries. It has made tens of...

CSA 2016 Elections Certified

CSA's Board of Technical Directors, at a meeting held during the Applied Superconductivity Conference in Denver, certified results from the society's recent election. Society members chose Peter Shirron, from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, as the new President-Elect, and Scott Courts, Richard Dausman, Peter Knudsen and Mark Zagarola as Directors.

Hybrid Magnet to Reach 43 Tesla

Intense magnetic fields are a powerful research tool, and researchers expect the opportunities opened up by the hybrid magnet being built at the CNRS National Laboratory for Intense Magnetic Fields in Grenoble to be vast. Current magnets at the facility operate at 36 teslas, but a new hybrid magnet there,...

BC Technical and Sumitomo Ink Deal

BC Technical, a leading non-OEM provider of medical imaging solutions, has announced a strategic relationship with Sumitomo (SHI) Cryogenics Group (CSA CSM) anticipated to help its customers increase MRI coldhead longevity and reduce cryogen use. The partnership, BC Technical says, means its customers can not only expect the same standard...

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Two-Phase Flows

Two-phase flows are those flows in which there is a mixture of two physical states (solid, liquid or vapor). In cryogenic applications, such flows are almost always a mixture of a cryogenic liquid along with its corresponding vapor. A mixture of liquid helium and helium vapor would be a typical...

Supercritical Fluids

A supercritical fluid is defined as a substance whose temperature and pressure exceed those of its critical point. Every pure substance has a critical point that is defined in thermodynamic space by a critical temperature and a corresponding critical pressure. For example, the critical point for helium has a critical...

Brayton Cycle

The Brayton cycle is one of the many thermodynamic cycles used to generate cooling at cryogenic temperatures. Strictly speaking, when referring to cooling we should call this the reverse Brayton cycle as the original Brayton cycle describes the process of power generation or propulsion via a gas turbine. In many...

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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