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Particle Accelerators Drive Decades of Discoveries at Berkeley Lab and Beyond

Accelerators have been at the heart of the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) since its inception in 1931, and are still a driving force in the laboratory’s mission and its R&D program. Accelerator R&D and experiments at the lab—and lab scientists’ participation in experiments at other...

Liquid Nitrogen as a Hair Solution?

Celebrity hairstylist Savio John Perreira is using cryogenics to treat hair at his Mumbai salon with the Cryo Detox hair treatment by Kerasol. The process includes a step where liquid nitrogen is sprayed on the hair strands. What could go wrong?

28th SCW Connects International Cryogenics Community

107 scientists, researchers and students attended CSA’s 28th Space Cryogenics Workshop held July 18 at the Heritage Hotel and Conference Center in Southbury CT. Attendees had the opportunity to share ideas in the form of back-to-back oral presentations with poster session breaks. The first day began with lectures on upcoming...

Cryogenic Engineers, Researchers Gather for CEC/ICMC 2019

Scientists and engineers gathered in Hartford CT for the 2019 CEC/ICMC conference. Held in the Connecticut Convention Center, with plenary sessions in the adjoining Marriot Hotel, CEC/ICMC hosted cryogenic experts and industry leaders sharing information and ideas from July 21-25. The traditional oral and poster sessions were held throughout the...

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Cold Compressors

A common way to provide cooling below the normal boiling point of helium (4.2K) is to reduce the pressure above the bath of liquid helium, thus also reducing the bath’s equilibrium saturation temperature. For example, to produce a 1.8K bath of liquid helium, the saturation pressure has to be reduced...

Kapitza Conductance

Kapitza conductance refers to the heat transfer between a solid surface and a fluid that covers that surface. Fundamentally, it describes the inherent difficulty in transferring energy from a solid to the fluid covering the solid surface. This phenomenon was first observed by P. L. Kapitza in 1941 while studying...

Thermosyphons

A thermosyphon (or thermosiphon) is a device that transfers heat via natural convection in a fluid. The natural convection is driven by gravity with the colder, denser fluid flowing downhill and the warmer, less dense fluid flowing back up. Thus, thermosyphons connect an object to be cooled with a reservoir...

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...