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Air Products Celebrates Heat Exchanger Roll Out

Air Products, a leader in liquefied natural gas technology and equipment, celebrated this month the rollout of the first completed LNG heat exchanger manufactured at its new production facility in Manatee County, Florida, a 300,000 square foot space that doubles the company's manufacturing capacity.

Atlas Copco Acquires Leybold Vacuum

Atlas Copco AB has acquired Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum GmbH, a pioneer of vacuum technology founded in 1850. Renamed Leybold GmbH, the company joins the vacuum solutions division at Atlas, expanding the group to over 6,500 employees in more than 35 countries.

Undergrads Construct Cryogenic Star-Tracking Instrument

A team of undergraduates from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) will soon deploy its Cryogenic Star Tracking Attitude Regulation System, a telescope and camera based “compass” for rockets that will orient the payload based on the images of stars. CSTARS uses a new kind of detector technology and will...

19th International Cryocooler Conference

A group of 180 researchers and engineers from 12 countries gathered in San Diego June 20-23 for the 19th International Cryocooler Conference (ICC19), coordinated by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and held at the Town and Country Resort and Convention Center. The conference included a combination of 80 oral...

LIGO Collaboration Prepares Cryogenic Update

In the past year, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) has twice observed gravitational waves from the merger of black holes in deep space. Thermal noise, however, limits how small a motion the system can detect. In order to address this issue, and thus take the next big step in...

SCW Student Scholarship Established

CSA has established the T.H.K. Frederking Space Cryogenics Workshop (SCW) Student Scholarship, an award honoring our first CSA Fellow, Dr. Traugott Frederking, who generously sponsored selected students to attend SCW to help develop their technical maturity by exposing them to current leaders and emerging developments in the field.

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Dilution Refrigerators

Dilution refrigerators are a common technique for reaching temperatures below 1K, particularly where continuous cooling at these temperatures is required. Helium exists in two stable isotopes: 4He and 3He. Naturally occurring 3He is extremely rare, constituting less than 1 part per million of helium gas. However, 3He can be manufactured,...

Oxygen Deficiency Hazards

Oxygen Deficiency Hazards (ODH) are a significant safety issue in cryogenic facilities. ODH occurs when inert gases such as nitrogen, helium or argon displace room air and thus lower the percentage of oxygen in the space below that required for human life. OSHA defines an area as oxygen deficient if...

Kelvin Temperature Scale

The Kelvin temperature scale is the principal temperature scale used in cryogenics and science. The kelvin is also one of the seven base units in the Système International d’Unités (SI) and is the unit of thermodynamic temperature. Thermodynamic temperature is a fundamental physical quantity (like mass, length or electrical current)...

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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