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

Zika Fear Heats Up, Cure Sought in Cold

North America is welcoming summer and with it the increased fear of a pronounced expansion of Zika from its southern neighbors. In April, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) held a summit to formulate an action plan against the virus and shortly thereafter began issuing statements, including...

A Cryogenic Valve Primer

It is remarkable but true that we’ve used valves to control the flow of liquids for thousands of years. The city of Pompeii’s water system, for example, utilized quarter-turn style valves that were in principle very similar to those in use today. Cryogenic valves, while unique, are similar to these...

Air Liquide Designing Cryogenic System for ITER

Air Liquide has substantial expertise in designing, fabricating and installing large capacity gas liquefaction and refrigeration systems. Its engineers have completed major cryogenic installations, for example, at CERN and KSTAR (the South Korean Tokamak) and are now working on ITER, providing the project with a centralized helium cryogenic plant and...

Forget Nitro Brew Coffee, Meet Nitro Bean

The perfect roast for your next cup of joe might just come from liquid nitrogen chilled coffee beans. A team from the University of Bath, working with the Bath coffee shop Colonna & Smalls, reports that chilling roasted beans before grinding results in small uniform coffee grinds. This provides for...

NASA’s MIRI Cryocooler Passes Inspection, Set for Installation on Webb Telescope

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have completed testing of a first-of-its-kind cryocooler for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. The cooler will chill one of the telescope's four instruments, the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), a device key to catching faint whispers of light from the very first stars born in...

LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves for a Second Time

Scientists from the LIGO Scientific Collaboration have observed gravitational waves for a second time, according to an announcement made on June 15 during the 228th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in San Diego. The detection of the waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime—was made on Dec. 25 by both...

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Regenerators

Regenerators or regenerative heat exchangers are a key component of cryocoolers such as pulse tube cryocoolers (Cold Facts, August 2014). Regenerator performance greatly affects the coefficient of performance of cryocoolers. Improvements in regenerator design and, in particular, regenerator materials have been an important factor in the improvement of the performance...

Pulse Tube Cryocoolers

The development of pulse tube cryocoolers has been a significant topic of research and development over the past 20 or so years. Pulse tube cryocoolers have a number of advantages over other types of cryocoolers and are now available commercially. In order to understand pulse tube cryocoolers, it’s best to...

Thermal Expansion

Thermal expansion refers to the change in size (length or volume) that a material undergoes as its temperature changes. In cryogenic systems this effect can be quite large and must be allowed for in the design. In isotropic materials, which include most engineering materials, the thermal expansion is the same...

Latest in Cryo Central

Magnetic Levitation

From http://www.superconductors.org. Magnetic-levitation is an application where superconductors perform extremely well. Transport vehicles such as trains can be made to “float” on strong superconducting magnets, virtually eliminating friction between the train and its tracks. Not only would conventional electromagnets waste much of the electrical energy as heat, they would have...

Superconductivity

From Superpower website. History of Superconductivity Superconductivity was discovered in 1911 by the Dutch physicist, Heike Kammerlingh Onnes when he was able to liquefy helium by cooling it to 4 Kelvin, or -452°F. This enabled him to cool other materials close to absolute zero and investigate their electrical properties. He...

Medical Applications of Cryogenics

Neutron Therapy Cryogenics is at the heart of nuclear accelerators. Accelerators such as Fermilab’s Tevatron make neutron therapy for cancer possible. From Fermilab Today 4/20/09: Fermilab currently offers neutron therapy. But staff at Fermilab designed and built the proton accelerator used by the nation’s first hospital-based treatment center to use...

Nuclear Physics

Al Zeller National Superconducting Cyclotron Lab (NSCL) at Michigan State University zeller@nscl.msu.edu Cryogenics has a long history in nuclear physics. The technology has its origins in the use of cold traps for maintaining a vacuum, which is required to prevent beam loss and for generating high voltages used in acceleration....

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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