Balancing the Cryopreservation Equation
BioCision executives Dr. Maria Thompson, Dr. Eric Kunkel and Dr. Rolf Ehrhardt discuss the thawing arm of the "cryopreservation equation" and the need to strictly control temperature throughout the process.
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SuperPower expands Quick Ship inventory
New segments have been added to SuperPower's Quick Ship inventory. The program enables the company to ship wire to clients in as little as 1-2 business days upon acceptance of a purchase order or pre-payment.
Neutrinos can deliver both full-on hits and “glancing blows”
In what they call a “weird little corner” of the already weird world of neutrinos, physicists have found evidence that neutrinos might be involved in a surprising reaction: interacting with a nucleus and leaving it basically untouched, inflicting no more than a glancing blow.
Accelerator-powered carbon dating
Accelerator mass spectrometry, an accelerator-driven form of carbon dating that requires only a tiny sample of the material, is advancing everything from archaeology to personalized medicine.
First LHC magnets prepped for restart
One-eighth of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) dipole magnets have reached the energy they'll need to operate in 2015. Engineers at CERN powered 154 superconducting magnets to a current of around 11,000 amps. This is about 1,000 times greater than an average household appliance and is required to make the...
Save the Date for the 2015 Space Cryogenics Workshop
NASA Glenn Research Center announces the 2015 Space Cryogenics Workshop (SCW), a division of the Cryogenic Society of America. All aspects of space cryogenics will be represented, with an emphasis on work related to previous missions as well as future research.
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Dewar
A dewar is a type of cryostat named after Sir James Dewar, the researcher who first developed the concept of a vacuum insulated container with silvered walls to reflect thermal radiation. Dewar was the first to liquefy hydrogen, and he created the device to store his discovery. The thermos bottle...
Stirling and Gifford-McMahon Cryocoolers
Stirling and Gifford-McMahon (GM) cryocoolers are two of the most commonly used cryocoolers in cryogenics. Both devices have a significant industrial base and operate at a wide range of temperatures and capacities. The thermodynamic cycles for both of these cryocoolers are quite similar. The Stirling cycle consists of a compressor,...
Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)
A significant commercial application of cryogenics is the liquefaction, transport and storage of natural gas. Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is generally 95 percent methane with a few percent ethane and much lower concentrations of propane and butane. LNG liquefies at 111.6 K. Unlike many applications of cryogenics, the motivation for...
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...
Power usage: cryogenic systems vs. regular refrigerators
A recent project highlighted to me that closed cycle cryogenic cooling systems use far more electrical power to reduce temperatures by a few watts than regular refrigerators. I am sure it must be something to do with the extra difficulty of removing the heat from the liquid nitrogen or similar...
Redundancy strategies for mechanical -80C freezers
I was wondering what kind of redundancy strategies are people using for their mechanical -80C freezers? I am aware of the following. Please add if you are doing something different. 1) 1 Backup freezer for every 10 freezers – Empty and maintained at -80C at all times 2) Backup C02...
Safety guidelines for handling cryo vessels of nitrogen
I am looking for any safety guidelines for handling cryogenic vessels of nitrogen indoors and outdoors. I am especially interested in recommendations for area monitors to detect leaks, flow detection devices, etc.
Method to move components in a cryogenic environment
Does anyone know of a method with which to reliably move components in a cryogenic environment? We are interested in moving detectors in a cryogenically cooled (2K) vacuum chamber, which is contained within a larger cryostat/isolation vacuum with thermal shields. As the desired horizontal or vertical displacement is between 10...