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

LCLS-II Upgrade Will Boost Power of World’s Brightest X-ray Laser

Construction is underway on a major upgrade to LCLS (Linac Coherent Light Source), a unique X-ray laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The project, known as LCLS-II, will add a second X-ray laser beam that’s 10,000 times brighter, on average, than the first one and fires...

Nexans’ Superconducting Fault Current Limiters Installed in Birmingham Power Grid

Western Power Distribution has integrated two 12 kV superconducting fault current limiters (sFCL) from Nexans Deutschland GmbH (CSA CSM) into the Birmingham UK power grid. The installation is part of FlexDGrid, a £17M project that aims to both reduce power cuts and carbon emissions and to increase the capacity of...

NASA Completes JWST Cryogenic Testing

NASA researchers have completed cryogenic testing on the science instruments module for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The module contains JWST's science cameras and spectrographs, and had been undergoing four months of monitoring inside a giant thermal vacuum chamber called the Space Environment Simulator (SES) at NASA's Goddard Space...

NASA Scientists Prepare Cold Atom Laboratory for ISS Mission

On a sun-drenched hill in Southern California's San Gabriel Mountains, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena are making progress on an experimental facility that could create the coldest known place in the universe. It's called the Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) and is expected to probe the wonders of...

FabLab, a STEM Show for Teen Girls, Launches on FOX

FabLab, a new science television series from the producers of the Teen Choice Awards, has launched on FOX. The show aims to enthuse tween and teen girls about STEM by drawing connections between STEM innovations and efforts to make the world a better place. FabLab is produced in partnership with...

NIST Develops First Widely Useful Measurement Standard for Breast Cancer MRI

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed the first widely useful standard for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the breast, a method used to identify and monitor breast cancer. The NIST instrument—a “phantom”—will help standardize MRIs of breast tissue and ensure quality control in comparing...

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

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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