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Forget Nitro Brew Coffee, Meet Nitro Bean

The perfect roast for your next cup of joe might just come from liquid nitrogen chilled coffee beans. A team from the University of Bath, working with the Bath coffee shop Colonna & Smalls, reports that chilling roasted beans before grinding results in small uniform coffee grinds. This provides for...

NASA’s MIRI Cryocooler Passes Inspection, Set for Installation on Webb Telescope

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have completed testing of a first-of-its-kind cryocooler for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. The cooler will chill one of the telescope's four instruments, the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), a device key to catching faint whispers of light from the very first stars born in...

LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves for a Second Time

Scientists from the LIGO Scientific Collaboration have observed gravitational waves for a second time, according to an announcement made on June 15 during the 228th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in San Diego. The detection of the waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime—was made on Dec. 25 by both...

EMIR Spectrograph Installed on Gran Telescopio CANARIAS

Engineers at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory have attached the EMIR spectrograph to the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC), realizing a more than decade long design and fabrication process. The cryogenic instrument was designed, built, assembled and verified entirely at the IAC (Astrophysics Institute of Canrias). It will produce images...

FAST Research Accelerator Reaches Design Beam Energy

In May, Fermilab sent an electron beam with an energy of 50 million electronvolts, or MeV, through the photoinjector at the Fermilab Accelerator Science and Technology facility (FAST), achieving a major design goal for the accelerator and marking the beginning of a new accelerator science program at the laboratory.

New Elements Named, Public Comment Sought

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has opened a five-month long public comment and review period of the names recommended for elements 113, 115, 117 and 118, the discoveries of which were announced late last year.

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Helium II

Helium II (He II) refers to the second liquid phase of the most abundant helium isotope (4He). Helium II is also referred to as superfluid helium. Helium II occurs once the temperature of the liquid helium drops below 2.17K. The phase transition between the first liquid phase of Helium (referred...

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

Seeking recommendations for commercial sensors

I would like to measure vibrations in small LHe cryostats. Could anybody recommend commercial sensors which would be suitable for the purpose? I am interested in the frequency range between 1Hz and a couple of KHz, with particular attention to the low frequency side.

Estimating cost of carbon steel, pure helium storage tanks

In order to perform an indicative cost assessment of our helium cryogenic plant (still in the design phase), I need an estimation of the cost of carbon steel room temperature pure helium storage tanks. The storage pressure is 20 bar. Can anyone give me suggestions about how to estimate the...

Supplier of pressure sensor that works down to 4.2 K

In an actual experiment we would like to measure the static pressure in a cryostat in the range between one and four bar. Therefore we are looking for some (more or less) cheap pressure sensors that work in liquid helium in the pressure range up to five bar. Unfortunately all...

Looking for reference/textbook suggestions

Can you suggest some reference textbooks for practical thermodynamics applications in cryogenic fields? I need textbooks with cryogenics calculations and examples, dimensioning procedures, second principle applications in cryogenics, heat load calculations, cryogenic pump application, etc. Do such books exist? Does any similar source of information exist?

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