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Nikkiso Acquires Cryogenic Industries

Nikkiso Co., Ltd. has announced its acquisition of Cryogenic Industries (CSA CSM), a group of product and service companies supporting both liquefaction and separation plants for air gases and small-scale plants for LNG liquefaction. The deal is worth an estimated $440 million and is expected to close in August.

CERN Celebrates Linac 4 Completion

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) celebrated the completion of its Linac 4 during a ceremony on May 9. The new accelerator is expected to allow the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to reach higher luminosity by 2021. The machine is almost 90 meters long, sits 12 meters below the...

Pulsating Heat Pipes Hold Promise for Future Space Flight

As space flight missions move away from tanks filled with cryogenic liquids towards cryocoolers to provide cooling for cryogenic payloads, new heat transport technologies are needed to cool distributed systems. Researchers have recently investigated pulsating (or oscillating) heat pipes (PHPs) at laboratories and universities in several countries. Possible applications for...

Advancing Cryogenic Temperature Instrumentation

Ryan Oliver explores the evolution of the techniques used to measure and control temperature since this time, with a focus on cryogenic temperatures as a tool, rather than techniques used by those working on defining temperature scales.

Nanoparticles Key to Tissue Preservation

A multidisciplinary research team has discovered a groundbreaking process to cool and rewarm large-scale animal heart valves and blood vessels preserved at very low temperatures. The discovery could result in a major step forward in saving millions of human lives by increasing the availability of organs and tissues for transplantation,...

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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...

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...