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

APS Joins SCOAP3 Consortium

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and the American Physical Society (APS) have entered into an agreement through SCOAP3 to provide open access to high-energy physics articles published in APS journals. The partnership, which begins in January 2018, covers articles from Physical Review C, Physical Review D and Physical...

NCIS Bungles Investigation, Conflates Cryogenics and Cryonics

A recent episode NCIS, a popular CBS police procedural, featured a villain who killed his victims with liquid nitrogen, interring them alive inside a homemade cryonics chamber. During the big reveal, the NCIS writers conflate cryonics with cryogenics, using one of the show's trope scientific experts to present the latter...

CSA Board Member Joins Superconductivity Center at FSU

Florida State University has hired Lance Cooley, CSA board member and a scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (CSA CSM), to join the Applied Superconductivity Center (ASC) at the FSU-based National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. He will also have a faculty appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at...

Physicists Observe Negative Mass in Bose-Einstein Condensate

Washington State University physicists have created a fluid with negative mass. Push it, and unlike every physical object in the known world, it doesn’t accelerate in the direction it was pushed. It accelerates backward. Led by Peter Engels, WSU professor of physics and astronomy, the researchers generated the conditions for...

O”H” What a Feeling, Toyota Introduces Hydrogen Powered Semi

Toyota has announced a new zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell system designed for semi-truck use at the Port of Los Angeles. Dubbed "Project Portal," the proof of concept vehicle was unveiled at a press conference with port officials and representatives from the California Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission....

European XFEL Commissions Its Particle Accelerator

The European XFEL has successfully commissioned the particle accelerator that will drive its X-ray laser. When fully operational, the research facility will produce up to 27,000 X-ray laser flashes per second, each so short and intense that researchers can make pictures of structures and processes at the atomic level. The...

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Space Cryogenics

Space cryogenics is, somewhat obviously, the application of cryogenics to space exploration and science. The use of cryogenics in space optimizes the launching of vehicles, provides power and life support to spacecraft and is critical for many scientific observations.Space cryogenics has a number of challenges and has driven both pure...

Exergy

The science of thermodynamics plays a major role in cryogenics. It underlies the various refrigeration cycles, from Carnot to Brayton (Cold Facts Vol. 32 No. 2) and Joule-Thomson, is a fundamental part of the definition of terms such as coefficient of performance (Cold Facts Vol. 31 No. 1) and even...

Cryogenic Treatment

Cryogenic treatment is the process of cooling materials to cryogenic temperatures temporarily to improve their material properties at room temperature. This is distinct from cooling materials down to cryogenic temperatures to take advantage of phenomena such as superconductivity that only occur at cryogenic temperatures. Cryogenic treatment, sometimes also referred to...

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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