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BCS Reimagines Life Support with Liquid Air

Former music teacher turned NASA propellants and pneumatics mechanic Ed Blalock understands cryogenic gases, and has positioned his new company, BCS Life Support, LLC, to revolutionize first responder and mine safety with cryogenic systems. The key is liquid air. BCS partnered with NASA’s Biomedical Lab and the National Institute for...

Mixed Refrigerant System Designed to Cool Deep Survey Telescope

When the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) first turns to survey the southern sky from its Chilean mountaintop perch in 2022, at least one group of scientists will be focused more on the telescope’s camera than the stunning images it’s expected to render. Those researchers are currently designing and testing...

Magnesium Diboride Superconducting Magnets Used in MRI

As a result of the growing concern over helium shortage and the need for direct conduction cooling, Hyper Tech’s magnesium diboride (MgB2) superconductors have been making substantial inroads into applications previously dominated by niobium titanium (NbTi). Working with Brookhaven National Laboratory, NASA, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and others...

Maglab Scientists Use NMR in Battle Against Influenza

Scientists at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (Maglab) (CSA CSM) have detailed the mechanism that activates influenza and permits it to reproduce in human cells. The research, published in Structure, shows for the first time how protons move through the virus’s M2 proton channel and portends the development of...

LHC ends 2015 with a cliffhanger

The final Large Hadron Collider results of the year are in. Particles circulated in the LHC at CERN on December 13 for the last time in 2015, and, two days later, the two large general-purpose experiments, ATLAS and CMS, presented their results from LHC Run 2. Both experiments saw an...

QuAIL project announces advances in quantum tunneling achieved on D-Wave 2X

NASA welcomed members of the news media on December 8 to tour its Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (QuAIL) at Ames Research Center, providing attendees a rare glimpse inside the facility that houses the 1,097-qubit D-Wave 2X quantum computer. Researchers on NASA’s QuAIL team are using the system to investigate areas...

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Two-Phase Flows

Two-phase flows are those flows in which there is a mixture of two physical states (solid, liquid or vapor). In cryogenic applications, such flows are almost always a mixture of a cryogenic liquid along with its corresponding vapor. A mixture of liquid helium and helium vapor would be a typical...

Supercritical Fluids

A supercritical fluid is defined as a substance whose temperature and pressure exceed those of its critical point. Every pure substance has a critical point that is defined in thermodynamic space by a critical temperature and a corresponding critical pressure. For example, the critical point for helium has a critical...

Brayton Cycle

The Brayton cycle is one of the many thermodynamic cycles used to generate cooling at cryogenic temperatures. Strictly speaking, when referring to cooling we should call this the reverse Brayton cycle as the original Brayton cycle describes the process of power generation or propulsion via a gas turbine. In many...

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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