A funding crisis at a leading research council in the UK, The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), has forced the country to pull out of plans for the International Linear Collider (ILC).
A proposed $310-million project that will double the energy of the electron beam at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) achieved a critical milestone on November 9, 2007, when the Department of Energy approved the project's performance baseline.
The Linear Collider Forum of America (LCFOA) has elected Dr. Terry Grimm of Niowave and John Urbin of Linde BOC Process Plants to their Board of Directors. Urbin is a CSA board member and Grimm, a CSA member, received the prestigious Boom award from the Society.
CSA member John Moeller, a cryogenic engineering consultant and owner, Trinity Technology, has published his personal account of the early days of the US space program, "From Malabar to the Moon," a hardcover book.
Phillip L. Korodi has joined Eden Cryogenics as Senior Designer. He has had an extensive career in the cryogenic industry. At Eden he will be responsible for vacuum insulated piping design and development over a variety of applications, including turnkey cryogenic systems.
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 (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,...
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...
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...
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 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...
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...
I am remembering in the 1970’s when astronauts were walking on the moon and carried oxygen in 300 ss bottles inside LN2 tanks which were filled and pressurized.
I am an engineer looking to improve our solenoid valve sealing on cryogenic medias. I was wondering if you knew of materials other then PTFE or glass filled PTFE that could be used for sealing.