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Delta Reliably Meets the Need for Cryogenic Pipe Shoes in the LNG Space

As the LNG industry has grown, so has the number of suppliers who serve that market. No one knows that better, perhaps, than Delta Machine & Ironworks. The Baton Rouge-based fabricator is rapidly becoming the “go to” supplier of one of the most indisputably vital support products on LNG jobsites. Over...
‘Much-loved’ UW collaborator John Clarke wins the Nobel Prize in Physics

‘Much-loved’ UW collaborator John Clarke wins the Nobel Prize in Physics

  The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis, “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit.” Clarke, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, collaborates with the Axion Dark...
The tokamak hall at Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ fusion energy facility in Devens, Massachusetts, will house the company’s SPARC reactor. Credit: Commonwealth Fusion Systems

How Advanced Materials Could Unleash Fusion Energy

by Prachi Patel Materials advances in the past decade have led to key breakthroughs in fusion energy. The past five years have seen the launch of numerous start-ups and a surge of investment into the long-sought clean energy source. Whether fusion becomes viable in the next decade depends on continued materials...
Infinite Helium flow path and heat diagram. Credit: Lake Shore Cryotronics

Getting Closer to Artemis II Rocket Completion with Newest Addition

NASA has integrated the Artemis II Orion stage adapter with the rest of the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket in the Vehicle Assembly Building at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Built by NASA engineers at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, the adapter connects the...

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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...

Cryogenic Electronics

Randall Kirschman, consulting physicist, Mountain View, California ExtElect@gmail.com Cryogenic electronics—the operation of electronic devices, circuits, and systems at cryogenic temperatures—has been a valuable technology for decades. Cryogenic electronics (also referred to as low-temperature electronics, or cold electronics) can be based on semiconductive devices, on superconductive devices, or on a combination...

Particle Physics: High Energy Physics

Cryogenics and High-Energy Physics 1. From symmetry magazine: http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/cms/?pid=1000627: Cryogenics is the study of how materials behave at temperatures near absolute zero. In high-energy particle accelerators, such frigid temperatures reduce the electrical resistance of wires in superconducting magnets, increasing the magnet strength and allowing faster particle acceleration. The same holds...

HTS Degaussing Systems

From the Spring 2009 issue of Cold Facts (Volume 25, Number 2): Thanks to a joint project by the US Navy and a number of industry partners, high temperature superconducting (HTS) technology is now at the heart of an advanced degaussing system aboard the USS Higgins at the naval station...

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

From http://www.superconductors.org: An area where superconductors can perform a life-saving function is in the field of biomagnetism. Doctors need a non-invasive means of determining what’s going on inside the human body. By impinging a strong superconductor-derived magnetic field into the body, hydrogen atoms that exist in the body’s water and...

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...

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...