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

New Dream Team Leading CERN

Fabiola Gianotti officially began her term as CERN's new—and first female—Director General on January 1, bringing with her a group CERN describes as a "new dream team." Gianotti earned her PhD in experimental particle physics from the University of Milan in 1989 and joined CERN as a researcher in 1994....

Generations of Tesla experts celebrate family reunion at TCC

Experts on superconducting radio frequency technologies (SRF) from all over the world came to the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in December for the Tesla Technology Collaboration (TTC) meeting. Akira Yamamoto, Asian director of International Linear Collider (ILC), said the TCC reminded him of a family reunion where everything from technical...

CEC/ICMC 2015 published papers now online and open access

Papers submitted to the 2015 Cryogenic Engineering and International Cryogenic Materials Conferences (CEC-ICMC) are now online. The complete set is available in two volumes, one for each conference, on IOP Science.

Beam-Beam Compensation Scheme Doubles Proton-Proton Collision Rates at RHIC

Accelerator physicists at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have successfully implemented an innovative scheme for increasing proton collision rates at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), an accomplishment that should in turn produce more data for scientists to sift through to answer important nuclear physics questions,...

Maxwell’s demon as a self-contained, information-powered refrigerator

Scientists at Aalto University in Finland have created an autonomous Maxwell’s demon that makes it possible to analyze the microscopic changes in thermodynamics. The nano-scale device may also facilitate the design of future computers.

Scientists study new alloy that gets tough at low temperature

Just in time for the icy grip of winter: A team of researchers led by scientists from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has identified several mechanisms that make a new, cold-loving material one of the toughest metallic alloys ever.

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Space Cryogenics

Space cryogenics is, somewhat obviously, the application of cryogenics to space exploration and science. The use of cryogenics in space optimizes the launching of vehicles, provides power and life support to spacecraft and is critical for many scientific observations.Space cryogenics has a number of challenges and has driven both pure...

Exergy

The science of thermodynamics plays a major role in cryogenics. It underlies the various refrigeration cycles, from Carnot to Brayton (Cold Facts Vol. 32 No. 2) and Joule-Thomson, is a fundamental part of the definition of terms such as coefficient of performance (Cold Facts Vol. 31 No. 1) and even...

Cryogenic Treatment

Cryogenic treatment is the process of cooling materials to cryogenic temperatures temporarily to improve their material properties at room temperature. This is distinct from cooling materials down to cryogenic temperatures to take advantage of phenomena such as superconductivity that only occur at cryogenic temperatures. Cryogenic treatment, sometimes also referred to...

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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