Cold Facts Digital – Page 63 – The go-to place for Cryogenics and Superconductivity

US Increasing overall 2019 NASA Funding

The budget for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate is increasing by 11% in 2019, providing an additional $6.9 billion to current and upcoming projects. Missions to Jupiter’s moon Europa and a new lunar research initiative are among the beneficiaries, each analyzed by the American Institute of Physics.

Astronauts Assemble Tools to Test Space Tech

Technology helps push the development of future human missions to the moon, Mars and beyond. And in order for astronauts to journey farther and live longer, according to NASA, teams will need to store and transfer super-cold liquids used for fuel and life support systems in space.

New Study Reveals When a Superconductor Truly Becomes Super

Unraveling the mystery of superconductivity at high temperatures, specifically in copper oxide materials, remains one of the most puzzling challenges in modern solid-state physics. But new multinational research has confirmed the existence of a copper-oxide-based (or cuprate) phase transition at a temperature close to absolute zero (-273°C).

SPHEREx Mission Selected to Uncover Origins of the Universe

NASA's Astrophysics Explorers Program and associated divisions are moving ahead with a new space mission designed to help astronomers understand both how our universe evolved and how common the ingredients for life are in our galaxy’s planetary systems.

New Ceramic Material Can Better Withstand Extreme Temperatures

UCLA researchers and joint collaborators have created an extremely light and very durable ceramic aerogel, a new material that could be used for applications like insulating spacecraft due to its ability to withstand severe temperature changes encountered on space missions.

CERN Focused on Transforming LHCb and Upgrading ALICE

A period of maintenance and upgrade work is well underway at CERN, part of a technical break called Long Shutdown 2. Planned LS2 projects involve either upgrading or replacing sub-detectors at ALICE, while the Large Hadron Collider team is focused on increasing the proton–proton collision rate at LHCb by a...

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

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...

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

Seeking recommendations for commercial sensors

I would like to measure vibrations in small LHe cryostats. Could anybody recommend commercial sensors which would be suitable for the purpose? I am interested in the frequency range between 1Hz and a couple of KHz, with particular attention to the low frequency side.

Estimating cost of carbon steel, pure helium storage tanks

In order to perform an indicative cost assessment of our helium cryogenic plant (still in the design phase), I need an estimation of the cost of carbon steel room temperature pure helium storage tanks. The storage pressure is 20 bar. Can anyone give me suggestions about how to estimate the...

Supplier of pressure sensor that works down to 4.2 K

In an actual experiment we would like to measure the static pressure in a cryostat in the range between one and four bar. Therefore we are looking for some (more or less) cheap pressure sensors that work in liquid helium in the pressure range up to five bar. Unfortunately all...

Looking for reference/textbook suggestions

Can you suggest some reference textbooks for practical thermodynamics applications in cryogenic fields? I need textbooks with cryogenics calculations and examples, dimensioning procedures, second principle applications in cryogenics, heat load calculations, cryogenic pump application, etc. Do such books exist? Does any similar source of information exist?

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