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Almac Unveils New Cryogenic Service Solution for Advanced Therapy Trials

Almac Clinical Services, a member of The Almac Group, announced a new state-of-the-art cryogenic service solution within its Durham, N. C. campus to support cell and gene therapies. This latest investment from Almac adds to the company’s overall $4 million investment to date in innovative cold chain technology in North...

Air Liquide to Design Cryogenic Tanks for Vega-E Space Launcher

Air Liquide is advancing space exploration, having signed a contract with space propulsion expert Avio for the design of the new generation of cryogenic tanks for the upper stage of the future Vega-E launcher. The project is coordinated by the European Space Agency (ESA), and the launcher will use cryogenic...

Video: Pushing the Limits of Cryogenic Technology

 The extremely low temperatures required for performing state-of-the-art physics experiments and operating large quantum processors have been achieved in Project Goldeneye. IBM researchers have successfully demonstrated the proof-of-concept technology for a dilution refrigerator capable of cooling future generations of quantum experiments. You can watch a sneak peek of the IBM Quantum...

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 Launches to International Space Station

The crew members assigned to NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission went into orbit following their launch to the International Space Station on Wednesday, October 5, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The international crew will serve as the agency’s fifth commercial crew rotation mission with SpaceX...

Cryogenic Blast Freezing in Minutes Increases Throughput

The biotech and biopharma industries utilize freezers to rapidly freeze and store thermally sensitive products such as vaccines and biopharmaceuticals as well as biological materials such as blood plasma. However, conventional compressor-based systems can take hours to reach an ultra-low target temperature, which slows production throughput.  For these industries, the...

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Mixed Refrigerant Cycles

Most cryogenic refrigeration systems, both large scale systems and cryocoolers, use helium as a working fluid. There are a number of advantages to helium, not the least of which is that helium remains a fluid down to the lowest achievable temperatures. In order to freeze helium, pressures of over 20...

Fountain Pumps and He II Phase Separators

Helium II (He II), the second liquid phase of the 4He isotope described in this column in Cold Facts Spring 2010 (http://2csa.us/he2), can be modeled as consisting of two interpenetrating fluids. One, the superfluid component, has zero viscosity and entropy and the other, the normal fluid component, has nonzero viscosity...

Turboexpanders

A vital technology in the refrigerators and liquefiers described in Cold Facts Volume 31 Number 3 is that of turboexpanders. These devices are rotating machines in which the process fluid (e.g., helium) does work against the turboexpander while moving from high pressure to a lower pressure and thus is cooled....

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...

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...