Cold Facts Digital – Page 61 – The go-to place for Cryogenics and Superconductivity

NASA Aims to Keep Fuel Cool Under Pressure with Zero Boil-Off Experiment On NG-23

Flight Engineer Joe Acaba works in the U.S. Destiny laboratory module on the International Space Station, setting up hardware for the Zero Boil-Off Tank (ZBOT) experiment. Credit: NASA Space missions rely on cryogenic fluids — extremely cold liquids like liquid hydrogen and oxygen — for both propulsion and life support...

Cryoport Opens cryogenic logistics facility near Paris

By Molly Burgesson Oct 03, 2025 Temperature-controlled supply chain solutions company Cryoport has opened a new facility in Louvres, France, with cryogenic capabilities to support the storage and transport of temperature-sensitive materials. The site was launched through subsidiary Cryoport Systems and is located near Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. It is...

Commonwealth Fusion Systems Signs PPA with Italian Energy Company Eni

By Zachary Skidmore Google-backed nuclear fusion firm Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) has signed a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Italian energy firm Eni for power from its ARC power plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia. In July, CFS became one of the first fusion firms to sign a PPA with a...

New Entanglement Breakthrough Links Cores of Atoms, Brings Quantum Computers Closer

Quantum entanglement — once dismissed by Albert Einstein as “spooky action at a distance” — has long captured the public imagination and puzzled even seasoned scientists. But for today’s quantum practitioners, the reality is rather more mundane: entanglement is a kind of connection between particles that is the quintessential feature...

Once complete, ITER will run fusion experiments using five times as much plasma as the largest reactors in operation today.

5,500 Superconducting Wires Survive Intense Testing for World’s Largest Fusion Reactor

By Gayoung Lee Stakeholders around the world are vying to realize nuclear fusion—a fossil fuel alternative that promises maximum energy generation with minimal environmental risk. Behind the efforts to build the world’s largest fusion reactor is an equally gigantic global collaboration: ITER, which has just announced a major advance in its quest...

The Future Is Frozen: How Cryogenics Is Redefining Food Innovation

By Douglas Hoon By Douglas Hoon, CTO and Co-Founder, Cometeer, Inc Key takeaways: Once relegated to the cold backrooms of industrial storage, cryogenics is now stepping into the spotlight as one of the most promising frontiers in food innovation. Long seen as a basic preservation tool, freezing is being reimagined—not...

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Two-Phase Flows

Two-phase flows are those flows in which there is a mixture of two physical states (solid, liquid or vapor). In cryogenic applications, such flows are almost always a mixture of a cryogenic liquid along with its corresponding vapor. A mixture of liquid helium and helium vapor would be a typical...

Supercritical Fluids

A supercritical fluid is defined as a substance whose temperature and pressure exceed those of its critical point. Every pure substance has a critical point that is defined in thermodynamic space by a critical temperature and a corresponding critical pressure. For example, the critical point for helium has a critical...

Brayton Cycle

The Brayton cycle is one of the many thermodynamic cycles used to generate cooling at cryogenic temperatures. Strictly speaking, when referring to cooling we should call this the reverse Brayton cycle as the original Brayton cycle describes the process of power generation or propulsion via a gas turbine. In many...

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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