Cold Facts Vol31 No 2 2015 PDF

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Helium Dewar Simulation with No Liquid Cryogens ..

8
Glen McIntoshs Kryo Kwiz ................................. 13
Lab-Based ADR Cryostats ................................. 20

Developments We Most Wish to See ................. 25


Featuring Women in Cryogenics and SC ........... 38
Calendar ............................................................. 49

Technology Focus: Cryocoolers


and Cryostats | 16

Volu
Vo
Volume
lume 31
lume
31 N
Number
umb
um
ber 2
ber
be

Join Our Growing Family of CSA


Corporate Sustaining Members

Get connected to the cryogenic


community worldwide. Let your voice be
heard and your contributions known.

Abbess Instruments and Systems, Inc.

Cryogenic Control Systems, Inc.

ISOFLEX USA

Quantum Design, Inc.

Ability Engineering Technology, Inc.

Cryogenic Industries, Inc.

Janis Research Co., Inc.

Ratermann Cryogenics

Acme Cryogenics, Inc.

Cryogenic Institute of New England

Kadel Engineering Corp.

Ratermann Manufacturing, Inc.

Advanced Piping Products

Cryogenic Limited

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Redstone Aerospace

Advanced Research Systems, Inc.

Cryogenic Machinery Corporation

Kelvin International Corporation

RegO Products

Aerospace Fabrication & Materials

Cryoguard Corporation

Kelvin Technology, Inc.

RICOR USA

Air Liquide advanced Technologies

Cryomagnetics, Inc.

KEYCOM Corporation

RUAG Space GmbH

American Magnetics, Inc.

Cryomech, Inc.

L&S Cryogenics

Scientific Instruments, Inc.

Amuneal Manufacturing Corp.

Cryonova, LLC

L-3 Communications Cincinnati


Electronics

SGD Inc.

Argonne National Laboratory

Cryotherm GmbH & Co. KG

Shell-N-Tube Pvt. Ltd.


Lake Shore Cryotronics, Inc.

Barber-Nichols, Inc.

shirokuma GmbH

CryoVac GmbH

Bauer Compressors

CryoWorks, Inc.

Linde Cryogenics, Division of Linde


Process Plants, Inc.

BellowsTech, LLC

CryoZone, a brand of DH Industries

Lydall Performance Materials

Spaulding Composites Inc.

Brooks Automation, Inc. Vacuum


Products Division

CSIC Pride (Nanjing) Cryogenic


Technology Co., Ltd.

Magnatrol Valve Corporation

SPS Cryogenics BV

Master Bond

STAR Cryoelectronics

Brkert Fluid Control Systems

Demaco Holland BV
Mesuron, LLC

CAD Cut, Inc.

DH Industries BV

Stirling Cryogenics, a brand of DH


Industries

Cameron Valves and Measurement

DH Industries India Pvt. Ltd.

Sierra Lobo, Inc.

MEWASA Ag, Inc.


Sthr Armaturen GmbH & Co. KG
Meyer Tool & Mfg., Inc.
CCH Equipment Company

Midwest Cryogenics

Sumitomo (SHI) Cryogenics of America,


Inc.

MMR Technologies, Inc.

Sunpower, Inc.

Molecular Products, Inc.

SuperPower Inc.

NASA Kennedy Cryogenics


Test Laboratory

Technifab Products, Inc.

DH Industries USA, Inc.

Chart Inc.

DMP CryoSystems, Inc.

Circor CryogenicsCPC Cryolab

Eden Cryogenics, LLC

Circuit Insights LLC

Essex Industries

Clark Industries, Inc.

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Coax Co., Ltd.

Fin Tube Products, Inc.

Composite Technology
Development, Inc.

Flexure Engineering

Temati
National High Magnetic Field
Laboratory

Tempshield Cryo-Protection
Thermax, Inc.

Gardner Cryogenics

National Superconducting Cyclotron


LaboratoryMSU

HPD

Nexans Deutschland GmbH

Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator


Facility

Hypres, Inc.

Niowave, Inc.

TRIUMF

Independence Cryogenic Engineering,


LLC

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

TS Italia SRL

Cryoco LLC

Indium Wire Extrusion

Oxford Instruments Omicron


NanoScience

V2 Flow Controls

Cryocomp
Cryoconnect, Div. of Tekdata
Interconnections Ltd.

INOXCVA

PHPK Technologies

Instant Systems, Inc.

Precision Measurements and


Instruments Corp.

Cool Pair Plus


Cryo Industries of America
Cryo Technologies

Valcor Scientific
WEKA AG

Cryofab, Inc.
International Cryogenics, Inc.
Cryogas Tech Sdn. Bhd.

Prentex Alloy Fabricators, Inc.

Wessington Cryogenics, Ltd.

Inside This Issue


FEATURES

16

20

7
8
10
16
20

Letter to the Editor: Dennis Howland Retires


Simulation of a Helium Dewar Using No Liquid Cryogens
First Annual FCC Held in Washington DC
Technology Focus: Cryocoolers and Cryostats
How Lab-Based ADR Cryostats Support Our Quest to
Understand the Universe

25
34

Developments We Most Wish to See

38
42
44

Featuring Women in Cryogenics and Superconductivity

Research and Development of Large-Scale Cryogenic Air


Separation in China

Product Showcase
YouTube Campaign Supports #mylinearcollider

COLUMNS

28

6
13
14
23
28
32

SPOTLIGHTS

Executive Directors Letter


Kryo Kwiz
Defining Cryogenics
Cold Cases
Space Cryogenics

12
12
12
12
22

STAR Cryoelectronics
shirokuma GmbH
V2 Flow Controls
Brkert Fluid Control Systems
Master Bond

Cryo-Oops

ON OUR COVER

44

47

PEOPLE & COMPANIES

49

CALENDAR

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

Our cover shows the South Pole Telescope


polarization focal plane during initial
deployment in early 2012. Image: Jason
Austermann

www.cryogenicsociety.org

From the Executive Director


Cold Facts Magazine
Executive Editor
LAURIE HUGET
Editor
KELSEY BEACHUM
Advertising Coordinator
KIM DURDEN
Online Marketing Manager
JO SNYDER
CSA Board of Technical Directors
Chairman
JOHN WEISEND II
European Spallation Source (ESS)
46 46-888 31 50
President
JAMES FESMIRE, NASA Kennedy
Cryogenics Test Laboratory | 321-867-7557
Past President
AL ZELLER
FRIB, MSU | 517-908-7395
President-Elect
MELORA LARSON, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
818-354-8751
Treasurer
RICH DAUSMAN, Cryomech, Inc.
315-455-2555
Secretary
JONATHAN DEMKO
LeTourneau University
Executive Director
LAURIE HUGET
Huget Advertising, Inc. | 708-383-6220 x 302
Registered Agent
WERNER K. HUGET, Huget Advertising, Inc.
Technical Directors
KATHLEEN AMM, GE Global Research
LANCE COOLEY, Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory
VINCENT GRILLO, Cryofab, Inc.
TERRY GRIMM, Niowave, Inc.
PETER SHIRRON, NASA Goddard
Space Flight Center
JOE SNYDER
WILLIAM SOYARS, Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory

Welcome
to the second
issue of 2015.
Weve reached
out successfully to our
members to
bring fresh, pertinent content to
Cold Facts. We think it enriches the
reading experience and is indicative
of the scope of our reader/member
base.
We are hard at work planning
for the upcoming Space Cryogenics
Workshop (SCW), to be held June
24-26 at the Embassy Suites Phoenix-Biltmore. Be sure to register before May 1 to get the early discount.
And make your hotel reservation by
May 27 to get the special discounted
rates. This year we are also offering
optional tours right after the workshop. See the Tours page of the
SCW website (http://2csa.us/tours)
for information and to sign up.
We have an exciting roster of
instructors for our Short Courses,
to be held on Sunday, June 28,
just before the start of the Cryogenic Engineering Conference/
International Cryogenic Materials
Conference (CEC/ICMC), at the
Marriott Starr Pass Resort, Tucson.
The great team of Ray Radebaugh
and Ron Ross will be teaching a
full-day course called Cryocooler
Fundamentals and Space Applications. This dynamic duo will bring
some serious expertise to the topic.
Were also presenting two half-day
courses. We will again offer Practical Thermometry and Instrumentation, an invaluable and important
course taught by Scott Courts, who

is an authority on this subject. Were


welcoming another new instructor
who will teach Superconducting
Radio Frequency Systems, Rong-Li
Geng. Students will get a grasp of
the major issues and technology of
SRF, an extremely timely topic.
Werner Huget and I plan to
attend the annual meeting of the
Compressed Gas Association in
mid-April, at the associations invitation. We hope to expand our
contacts and knowledge of whats
going on in the areas of industrial
gases.
We look forward to our next
issue, Cold Facts Volume 31 Number 3, which will feature cryogenic
vacuum technology; an update on
helium sources, liquefaction and
uses; superconducting energy transmission and storage; a technology
focus on valves and pumps; and
tributes to CSA Fellow Dr. Thomas
Flynn, who passed away on March
16.
Volume 31 Number 4 will feature cryotechnology for LNG transportation, storage and distribution;
an ITER update; some young faces
in cryogenics and superconductivity; reports on SCW and CEC/
ICMC; and a technology focus on
cryogenic piping, transfer lines, fittings and connectors.
We invite you to submit content
on these topics so we can continue
our plan to include our readers and
members in the fabric of Cold Facts.

SIDNEY YUAN, The Aerospace Corp.


Cold Facts (ISSN 1085-5262) is published six times per year by the
Cryogenic Society of America, Inc.
Contents 2015 Cryogenic Society of America, Inc.

Although CSA makes reasonable efforts to keep the


information contained in this magazine accurate, the
information is not guaranteed and no responsibility is
assumed for errors or omissions. CSA does not warrant
the accuracy, completeness, timeliness or merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose of the information
contained herein, nor does CSA in any way endorse the
individuals and companies described in the magazine or
the products and services they may provide.

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

Editorial Board
Randall Barron, ret. Louisiana Tech University
Jack Bonn, VJ Systems, LLC
Robert Fagaly, Quasar Federal Systems;
SPAWAR
Brian Hands, ret. Oxford University
Peter Kittel, ret. NASA Ames
Peter Mason, ret. Jet Propulsion Lab

Glen McIntosh, McIntosh Cryogenics


John Pfotenhauer, University of
Wisconsin-Madison
Ray Radebaugh, ret. NIST Boulder
Ralph Scurlock, Kryos Associates,
ret. University of Southampton
Nils Tellier, NTCI, a Division of EPSIM Corp.

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Letter to the Editor: Dennis Howland Retires


CSA received the following letter
from Dennis Howland, formerly president of DLH Industries.
Dear Werner and Laurie:
As you probably already know, I have
sold my company, DLH Industries and the
Cryocomp product line, to Cryofab Inc. of New Jersey. It took me a
couple of years to make the decision
to sell and after discussing possibilities with several companies in the
industry, Cryofab surfaced as the
best choice in my opinion. They work
hard, are very customer-oriented and
are just good people.

I got involved with CSA and began


attending the cryogenic meetings during
my tenure at Cryolab sometime in the early
80s. At the CEC/ICMC and ASC conferences I met a number of amazing, friendly
and great people from many corners of the
industry, companies big and small, engineers, lab techs, machinists, managers and
consultants, many of whom I hope to main-

tain contact with and consider personal


friends and mentors.
One of my favorite experiences, other
than getting frostbite on my toes during a
valve test that went awry, was becoming
a part of the Cryo Mafia, which brought
many like-thinking individuals together,
mostly for the purpose of discussing food
and drink and usually a little technical discussion to keep the tax guy
happy. They are a very social lot.
The cryogenics industry is an
extremely close-knit community and
I am pleased to have been a thread in
that fabric and hopefully contributed
something of lasting value. To anyone who would like to stay in touch,
my email is cryowiz02@gmail.com.

My personal experience in cryogenics has covered a span of more


than 40 years if you count my almost
first job out of college testing 8" ball
valves for Rocketdyne in the mid 60s
and later designing relief valves for
Anderson Greenwood into the 70s.

Regards,
Dennis Howland
President Retired
DLH Industries

Cryogenic Engineering
and Safety Course 2015
August 3-7, 2015
Colorado School of Mines
Golden, Colorado

This comprehensive 5-day course is rewritten and


updated annually. It covers all aspects of cryogenic
principles, equipment/manufacturing, cryogenic
working fluids, materials, applications, refrigeration
and safety principles.
Updates include LNG technology and applications
Register online, by email with any major credit card, PO Order
or by check via US Mail.

Download a 2015 brochure on our website:


www.cryocourses.com

CRYOCO LLC
info@cryocourses.com
305-972-8847

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Simulation of a Helium Dewar Using No Liquid


Cryogens
by Dr. Mark O. Kimball, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, mark.kimball@nasa.gov

Fifty milliKelvin, now thats cold! This


is the temperature at which the detector
array aboard the soft X-ray detector (SXS),
destined for the Japanese Astro-H mission,
is held when gathering X-rays. This detector is capable of sub-5 eV resolution and is
state-of-the-art at the time of this writing [1].
To achieve this amazing feat, the detector array must be cooled to 50mK. This is
done by connecting it to the coldest stage
of a multi-stage adiabatic demagnetization
refrigerator (ADR).
This ADR, developed by the Cryogenics and Fluids Branch at NASAs Goddard
Space Flight Center, is capable of holding
the detector array at 50mK for greater than
24 hours with better than 2K stability over
a 10-minute period [2]. After its cooling
capacity is expended, the refrigerator may
recycle to either a pumped helium bath at

Figure 1: The dewar containing the cryostat


built specifically for testing the Astro-H
detector array and ADR. During assembly, the
dewar is rotated upright. During operation,
it is rotated horizontal to the ground to allow
the pulse tube of the cryocooler to align
vertically.

1.2K or a 4.5K Joule-Thomson cooler. These


two heat sinks allow a great deal of flexibility and fault tolerance.
The capabilities and performance of
the ADR system are covered elsewhere [2].
What has not been described before is the
ground-based system used to test both the
engineering and flight models of the ADR
and detector array. To fully test the ADR,
a cryostat that simulates both heat sinks
found in the cooling chain of the flight unit
is needed. Therefore, both a 1.2 and 4.5 Kelvin interface are required in any simulation
of the flight dewar. The higher temperature
is achieved using a commercial off-the-shelf
cryocooler. The lower temperature may be
achieved using a helium-4 bath evacuated
until the vapor pressure is below 82 Pa
(about 0.6 Torr). However, a helium bath
requires periodic refilling during a testing
campaign. To perform the refill the bath
needs to be warmed to 4.2K, additional
liquid helium must be added, and then the
bath must be pumped back to operating
pressure. To avoid this additional labor, and
the associated attention necessary when
using sub-atmospheric liquid helium, it
was decided early in the program that the
helium tank would be simulated using a
2-stage ADR with the same 4.5K cryocooler
already required for the higher temperature
heat sink mentioned above.
An ADR uses the magneto-caloric effect to cool to low and ultralow temperatures. Simply put, when a paramagnetic
substancetypically a pill containing a salt
with the proper magnetic characteristics for
a given operating temperature rangeis
subjected to an increasing magnetic field,
the individual magnetic moments will align.
This alignment lowers the entropy of the
paramagnetic material, and energy is liberated in the form of heat. If the pill within the
ADR stage is connected to a heat sink at a
lower temperature, heat will flow out of the
pill while the entropy of the paramagnetic
system decreases. After an upper field is
reached, the thermal link between the salt
pill and the heat sink is opened. A reduction
of the magnetic field permeating the salt
pill will cool the pill along with anything
attached to itsuch as a detector array.
When the desired operating temperature is
reached, one controls the rate of reduction
in the magnetic field such that the entropy

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

Figure 2: A two-stage ADR provides the


cooling for the helium tank. The two stages
are on the right side in the photo (one hidden
behind the other), the heat switches are on
the left, and the bottom of the helium tank is
seen in the upper portion of the photo.

change in the pill matches the heat coming


from the detector array. The end result is a
constant ultralow temperature of the array.
To mimic a helium tank with an ADR,
one first brings the interface acting as the
helium tank to a fixed low temperature, say
1.2K, using an ADR stage. Then one controls
the demagnetization rate such that any heat
imposed on the tank is taken up by the ADR
system. Therefore, the helium tank is held at
a constant temperature as long as the ADR
has cooling capacity in excess of the heat
flowing into the tank.
For this system, we have built an ADR
with two stages. Both stages use gadolinium
gallium garnet as the paramagnetic material. This choice of material is based upon
the ease of procurement and relatively low
cost (it is used as an optical or laser crystal).
It also has magnetic characteristics so that it
works well in the 1.2 to 4.5K range.
This two-stage ADR may be configured
in one of two ways. The first uses one stage
as an active thermal ballast while the other
stage rapidly cycles between the helium tank
and cryocooler temperatures. This pulls
heat from the helium tank and transfers it
to the higher temperature cryocooler. When
not transferring heat to the cryocooler, the
cycling stage, Stage B, attempts to cool the
helium tank below the tank temperature
setpoint. However, the ADR stage directly
coupled to the helium tank simulator, Stage
A, compensates by magnetizing and adding heat to the tank to maintain a constant
www.cryogenicsociety.org

temperature. When Stage B depletes its cooling


capability it decouples from the helium tank
via a heat switch. At this point, Stage A must
decrease the current in its associated magnet
to pull incoming heat from the helium tank.
Simultaneously, the cycling stage recycles by
lifting its stored heat to the cryocooler. After
the recycle finishes, the second stage lowers its
temperature below the helium tanks setpoint
and the thermal link between Stage B and the
tank is made via the heat switch. Stage A again
compensates to keep the temperature constant
by increasing the field in its magnet. This cycle
continues until the testing campaign is over.

3a

3b

The second configuration is one where


both stages cycle as quickly as possible in a
manner that is synchronous but out of phase
by 180 degrees. Here, one stage is lifting heat
to the cryocooler while the other is controlling
the temperature of the tank. This configuration trades temperature stability for additional
cooling power. This allows the temperature of
the tank to be lower than configuration [A] but
with larger temperature fluctuations.
A plot of the temperature of the helium
tank, Stage A and Stage B during multiple ADR
cycles is shown in Figures 3b and 4b. Compar-

Temperature profile of the helium tank, ADR


Stage A and ADR Stage B during operation.

ing both plots, one finds a higher temperature stability for configuration [A]
in Figure 3 but with a higher overall
tank temperature. The opposite is seen
for configuration [B] in Figure 4. One
could merge the two configurations
into a system that combines the positive attributes of both. This would be
accomplished by adding a third stage
to configuration [B] that would act as
an active thermal ballast to smooth
out the temperature fluctuations during handoff of control of the helium
tank from one of the other two stages.
Another method of smoothing the
temperature disturbances is to utilize
a feed-forward control of both ADR
stages, but this is a topic for another
time.
So, it is possible to simulate the
environment offered by a liquid helium dewar without using a liquid
cryogen. The cryostat described here
simulates the environment that the instrument developed by NASA for the
Astro-H mission will experience when
it gazes into outer space. Over the past
few years this cryogen-free cryostat
was used to test both the engineering
and flight models of the Astro-H ADR
and detector assembly. At the time of
this writing, the flight ADR and detector assembly are being integrated into
the spacecraft at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency facility in
Tsukuba, Japan.

Figure 3: ADR configuration [A]. Here, the tank temperature is controlled by ADR Stage A, while
Stage B periodically pulls heat from the tank and lifts it to the cryocooler.

4a

4b

Temperature profile of the helium tank, ADR


Stage A and ADR Stage B during operation.

References
1. F. S. Porter, J. S. Adams, G. V. Brown,
J. A. Chervenak, M. P. Chiao, R. Fujimoto, Y. Ishisaki, R. L. Kelley, C. A.
Kilbourne, D. McCammon, K. Mitsuda, T. Ohashi, A. E. Szymkowiak, Y.
Takei, M. Tashiro, and N. Yamasaki.
The detector subsystem for the SXS
instrument on the ASTRO-H Observatory. In Society of Photo-Optical
Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)
Conference Series, volume 7732 of
Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) Conference
Series, page 3, July 2010.
2. P. J. Shirron, M. O. Kimball, B. L.
James, D. C. Wegel, R. M. Martinez,
R. L. Faulkner, L. Neubauer, and M.
Sansebastian. Design and predicted
performance of the 3-stage ADR for
the Soft-X-ray Spectrometer instrument on Astro-H. Cryogenics, 52(4-6,
SI):165-171, Apr-Jun 2012.

Figure 4: ADR configuration [B]. Here, both stages alternate between controlling the temperature of
the tank temperature and transferring heat to the cryocooler.

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

www.cryogenicsociety.org

First Annual FCC Week Held in Washington DC


The CERN Courier reports that some 340 participants from science and industry attended the first global
Future Circular Collider (FCC) week in Washington DC
March 23-27 to discuss the study status and plans for
the future.
The proposed FCC accelerator ring would be 100
kilometers around and run at 100 TeV center of mass
energy. A total of 219 contributions from all areas of the
study showcased both the progress achieved and the
challenges ahead. The FCC week covered all aspects of
the studydesigns of 100-km hadron and lepton colliders, infrastructures, technology R&D, experiments and
physics. Geology studies are also underway for siting
the FCC in a tunnel near Geneva, Switzerland, linked
to CERN. A total of 51 institutes have joined the FCC
collaboration since February 2014 and the FCC study has
been recognized by the European Commission.
Jointly organized by CERN and the US DOE with
support from the IEEE Council on Superconductivity
Image: Luca Bottura, CERN
(CSC), the week was organized by Dr. Bruce Strauss
(DOE), Dr. Michael Benedikt (CERN) and Dr. Frank Zimmermann (CERN). Local
arrangements were handled by Suzanne Strauss for the CSC. More than a third of the
participants (120) came from the US. CERN (93), Germany (20), China (16), UK (16),
Italy (12), France (11), Russia (11), Japan (10), Switzerland (10) and Spain (6) were
also represented. For further information, visit www.cern.ch/fccw2015.

The meeting began with a presentation by US


congressman Bill Foster, who recalled the past history of the LHC as well as the former design studies
for a Very Large Hadron Collider. He encouraged
the high energy physicists in the audience to
never be shy in standing up for the unique nature
of their field and never be afraid of big numbers.
A special session on Thursday was devoted to the
experience with the US LHC Accelerator Research
Program, to the US particle physics strategy and
to US R&D activities in high field magnets and superconducting radio frequency. A well-attended
industrial exhibition and a complementary industry fast-track session were focused on Nb3Sn and
high temperature superconductor development.
James Siegrist from the US DOE pointed the
way for aligning the high field magnet R&D efforts at the four leading US magnet laboratories
(Brookhaven, Fermilab, Berkeley Lab and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory) with the
goals of the FCC study. An implementation plan
for joint magnet R&D will be composed in the near
future. Discussions with further US institutes and
universities are ongoing, and within the coming
months several other DOE laboratories should join
the FCC collaboration. A first US demonstrator
magnet could be ready as early as 2016.
FCC study leader Benedikt pointed out that
2015 should be the year in which the worldwide
collaboration reaches consensus on the baseline parameters and concepts and fleshes out the collider
layout and injector and infrastructure concepts.
It is time to put a Nb3Sn 16 T magnet program
on solid feet, to define and launch other selected
technology R&D programs, he said.
The next FCC week will be held in Rome on
April 11-15, 2016.

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

10

www.cryogenicsociety.org

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SPOTLIGHT ON NEW SUSTAINING MEMBERS

CSA Welcomes Newest Corporate Sustaining Members


STAR Cryoelectronics
STAR Cryoelectronics, founded in
1999, is a leading supplier of advanced
LTS and HTS dc SQUID sensors, cryocables, PC-based SQUID readout electronics, TES microcalorimeter and STJ
X-ray detectors, and two-stage SQUID
amplifier readouts for cryogenic detectors. It also produces the popular Mr.
SQUID educational demonstration
system.
The company offers extensive custom LTS and HTS thin-film design and
foundry services for a wide range of superconducting electronics applications.
STAR Cryoelectronics also offers turnkey, cryogen-free ADR cryostats with
cooling to 50mK, TES microcalorimeter
spectrometers for X-ray microanalysis,
and STJ X-ray absorption spectrometers
for synchrotron science applications.
www.starcryo.com

shirokuma GmbH
shirokuma GmbH provides cryogenic expertise, prototype construction
for cryogenic components and practical
problem-solving for technology devel-

opment for research institutions and


industrial partners. Customers will
benefit from their longstanding practical experience in cryogenics and their
expertise in hydrogen as energy-carrier
technology, in cryogenics and at pressures up to 1000 bar.
shirokuma GmbH links science and
industry by connecting with experts
from Swiss and international research
organizations and with industrial companies in cryogenics. In cooperation
with a qualified engineering company,
shirokuma GmbH maintains a suppliers network with the latest manufacturing and joining technologies, including
additive manufacturing in metals and
plastics. The company offers sizing calculations for control valves and process
components and for processes based on
the CONVAL software tool with integral property database for gases and
liquids. www.shirokuma-gmbh.ch

V2 Flow Controls
An authorized full service distributor of Sponsler, V2 Flow Controls
has the knowledge and capability to

support customers in the cryogenic


industry. Whether transporting, loading or delivering, Sponsler cryogenic
measurement systems are specifically
designed and tested to thrive in harsh
industry conditions. Incorporating the
Sponsler Precision Turbine Meter and
selecting an electronic or mechanical register allows users to assemble
a cryogenic measurement system perfectly suited to their needs.
The T675 Cryogenic Flow Totalizer,
Sponslers electronic register designed
specifically for cryogenic applications,
provides a comprehensive array of
transaction, metrological, security and
maintenance options so users can tailor
their cryogenic measurement system
according to their operations. Sponsler cryogenic measurement systems
are available in volumetric and mass
configurations that provide precision
performance in both cryogenic and
ambient temperatures. The systems
are designed and certified to meet or
exceed the requirements stated in NIST
Handbook 44 as well as OIML R81,
OIML R117-1 and MID. www.v2flow
controls.com

SPOTLIGHT ON SUSTAINING MEMBER

Brkert Receives 2015 Golden Gas Award


Brkert Fluid Control Systems has won the 2015 Golden
Gas Award from the US magazine Gases & Instrumentation
International for the companys
new Type 8741 mass flow controller (MFC)/mass flow meter
(MFM). The MFC/MFM features
a standardized interface for realtime communication with the
proprietary Brkert system bus
(bS). The system control unit
Type ME2X can control up to 16
bS devices and functions as a gateway
between industrial ethernet and the
bS. Brkert Communicator software

be used to switch between bS


and CANopen.

enables intuitive parameterization of


the MFC/MFM and allows convenient
process control. If a CAN bus already
exists, a toggle switch on the device can

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

12

G&I covers the technology


and application of industrial,
specialty and medical gases. The
Golden Gas Awards are judged
by a panel of independent technical experts not affiliated with any
product or manufacturer. Products are rated on ability to solve
an important challenge to the gas
industry, such as technological
innovation, superior specifications in
terms of power requirements, speed,
maintenance and other quality considerations. www.burkert.com
www.cryogenicsociety.org

Kryo Kwiz
by Dr. Glen McIntosh, McIntosh Cryogenics, CEC Collins Awardee, CSA Fellow, cryogem@juno.com

elow is a problem and its solution from one of the past editions
of our monthly e-newsletter,
CryoChronicle.

February 2015
Question: Kryowhiz designed a
1.8K superfluid liquid helium dewar for
a space launch. Its heat leak was low,
but Kryowhiz was concerned that a few
hours of hold time on the launch pad
might cause it to start venting. Frosty
suggested a simple procedural change
to extend the no-loss time on the launch
pad.

Answer: Frosty noted that the


maximum density of liquid helium is at
the 2.172K Lambda point and density
falls somewhat down to about 1.5K and
is practically constant to lower temperatures. Thus, cooling the load on the
launch pad from 1.8K down to 1.5K or
colder would allow the liquid to warm
up all the way to the Lambda point
without venting.

Could you have answered


this question correctly? Look for
the Kryo Kwiz every month in
our CryoChronicle e-newsletter.
Subscribe at www.cryochronicle.
com.

What was his suggestion?

Take advantage of the time off before the CEC/ICMC!


Sign up for one of two CSA

Tours

being offered on June 27

Winding through the city


streets, this tour provides

Wt
the surrounding desert and

tD

Valley Discovery City Tour

Grand Canyon Ground Tour

This full-day tour includes


stops at the Grand Canyon,
where there will be a guided

out and take pictures, and the
E/Z
where we can learn about
their culture.

Register online at http://2csa.us/tours

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

13

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Defining Cryogenics
by Dr. John Weisend II, European Spallation Source, CSA Chairman, john.weisend@esss.se

Air Separation

ir separation is one of the largest, as well as earliest, industrial applications of cryogenics.


In this process, cryogenic temperatures
are used to separate air into its constituent gases: nitrogen (78.08%), oxygen
(20.95%), argon (0.93%) and carbon dioxide (0.3%). Trace gases such as krypton, neon, xenon and helium total far less
than 1%. Water vapor can also be a significant fraction of air but it is removed
along with carbon dioxide at the start of
the separation process.
The components of air have many
applications in industry and research,
and the separation, transport and selling
of these gases is a multibillion dollar industry. Air separation is a principal part
of the business of large
industrial gas firms
such as Air Products,
Air Liquide, Linde and
Praxair.
There are essentially two production
models used in the air
separation industry.
In the first, centralized
plants separate the
air and the resulting
components are then
shipped to customers
offsite, frequently in
the form of cryogenic
liquids. In the second, an air separation
plant is located at the
customer site itself to
produce, for example,
oxygen for a chemical plant or steel mill
or nitrogen for use in
pressurizing oil fields
to increase recovery.
The remaining gases
not of direct interest to
the customer are either
sold to other customers

or vented to the atmosphere, depending


on the economic case. Air separation
plants are quite large, with typical capacities being thousands of tonnes per
day of oxygen and nitrogen produced.
Cryogenic air separation is based
on the principle of rectification, which
is defined in Barron as the cascading
of several evaporations and condensations carried out in counterflow.
A simple version of this is shown in
Figure 1. Air is compressed and all of the
water, hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide
are removed. The resulting air is cooled
down via heat exchange with colder
flows of nitrogen and oxygen and then
expanded via both expansion engines
and valves to near the saturation tem-

perature of oxygen and nitrogen. This


cold, near-saturated mixture is then fed
into the rectification column. Since oxygen has a higher boiling temperature
than nitrogen, as the mixture progresses
through the trays or plates of the column, the liquid portion, which flows
down, becomes progressively richer in
oxygen, while the gas portion, which
flows up, becomes progressively richer
in nitrogen. The liquid oxygen at the bottom of the column still contains significant amounts of nitrogen, while the gas
at the top is almost pure nitrogen, with
small fractions of argon, xenon, helium,
etc. In the example given, the plant was
designed only to produce crude oxygen
and the nitrogen flow is vented. Many
complicated variations on this technique

Figure 1 Schematic of a liquid oxygen plant. Image: Mechanical Engineers Handbook, Vol. 4, M. Kutz (Ed).
Copyright 2015 Air Liquide. Reproduced with permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

14

www.cryogenicsociety.org

exist. One of the most common uses two


rectification columns placed on top of
each other, operating at different pressures. This arrangement (known as the
Linde double-column system) results in
the production of much higher purity
oxygen and nitrogen. Additional columns can be added to remove argon,
xenon, krypton and neon.
In all cases, the systems make judicious and clever use of colder mixtures
to precool warmer mixtures and of
warmer flows to boil off gas from colder
mixtures. The rectification columns and
their associated heat exchangers and
valves are generally referred to as air
separation units in the industrial gas
industry.
Helium can be separated from air,
but it is far more cost effective to separate it from natural gas fields where it
can occur in percentages greater than
1%, as opposed to only 0.0005% in air.
A very large helium liquefier plant has

recently been built in Qatar to liquefy


the helium extracted from the natural
gas fields.
The need for air separation plants to
compress and move thousands of tonnes
of air a day means that they require
significant amounts of energy. Thus,
a number of energy recovery schemes
are typically used, including using the
work done by the gas on the expansion
engines to help power the compressors.
Research on modeling and optimizing
the rectification columns and heat exchangers to improve the product purity
while reducing energy consumption is
ongoing.
Additional details on cryogenic air
separation may be found in Cryogenic
Engineering, R. Barron, McGraw-Hill
(1966); Separation of Gases, W. H. Isalski,
Oxford University Press (1989); and Air
Separation Plant Design, D. J. Hersh
and J. M. Abrado, Cryogenics (July 1977).
Examples of modeling of air separation

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

15

plant components include Simulation of


Multistream Plate-Fin Heat Exchangers
of an Air Separation Unit, R. Boehme
et al., Cryogenics 43 (2003) and Hybrid
Model of Structured Packing Column
for Cryogenic Air Separation, Z. Wu
et al. Proc. ICEC 24 (2013). An example
of using heat recovery to reduce energy
use in air separation plants is presented
in A Novel Cryogenic Air Separation
Process Based on Self-Heat Recuperation, Y. Kansha et al., Separation and
Purification Technology 77 (2011). The
relative merits of cryogenic air separation and pressure temperature swing
adsorption techniques are discussed in
Comparative Analysis of Cryogenic
and PTSA Technologies for Systems of
Oxygen Production, T. Banaszkiewicz
et al. in Adv. Cryo. Engr. Vol 59b (2014).
A description of the Air Liquide helium
liquefier built in Qatar may be found
in Ras Laffan Helium Recovery Unit
HeRUII Project, R. Ali Said et al., Proc
ICEC 2014 (at press).

www.cryogenicsociety.org

TECHNOLOGY FOCUS

Cryocoolers and Cryostats


Cold Facts asked our members in the
field of cryocoolers and cryostats to weigh
in on the technologys most important
developments, significant contributors
and anticipated future advances. Here is
a roundup of their replies.

Most important developments


Ray Radebaugh (ret. National Institute of Standards and Technology) ranks
multilayer insulation (MLI) among the
most important developments in cryocoolers. MLI is now used everywhere in low
loss dewars and in cryocoolers for minimizing heat leak, he said. It is also used
for thermal control in spacecraft. Dewar
heat leaks were reduced by about an order
of magnitude compared with the powder
insulations used before MLI came on the
scene.
Radebaugh also included GiffordMcMahon cryocoolers as an important development, as they have been the workhorse cryocooler for a very wide range of
applications ranging from cryopumping,
MRI systems and many R&D applications.
The development of rare earth materials
helped them expand their applications to
the 4K range.
Alan Caughley (Callaghan Innovation) listed the Gifford-McMahon cryocooler as well. This really was
the first useful cryocooler and
started [the] use of cryocoolers
instead of liquid cryogens, he
said. It opened up the possibility of a dial-up temperature
and has been the workhorse of
the industry for 50 years.

uid helium on many 4K experiments and


applications.
The development of pulse tube cryocoolers has been one of the major advances
in the past three decades that has helped
expand the use of cryocoolers in both
ground and space applications, said Ali
Kashani (Atlas Scientific).
In my own narrow specialty of
linear-motor-driven pulse tube cryocoolers, said Philip Spoor (Chart, Inc., a CSA
CSM), one could argue that the single
most important development, which allows us to be more productive every
day, was the development of computer
codes that model these devices accurately
enough to make reasonable predictions
about what theyll do. This applies especially to the widely used computer codes
Sage and DeltaE, because they enable colleagues to share information and designs
more readily than if everyone is using
their own codes.
Peter Kittel (ret. NASA Ames) cited
the invention of the orifice pulse tube,
explaining, This cryocooler was vastly
more efficient than the original, basic
pulse tube. Its efficiency was high enough
that it could [be] put to practical use and it
has been in medical, industrial and space
applications.

the Oxford-type linear compressor to be


equally important for higher temperature
space cryocoolers. Durand also listed the
adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator for
low temperatures as another significant
development. The ability of the magnetic
field to interact with the spin temperature
without a thermal parasitic enables fantastically low temperatures in a relatively
small device, he explained.
Others also listed developments pertaining to space. The development of
a spaceflight cryocooler that lifts 20 W
at 20K is an important development for
cryocoolers in recent years, said Shuvo
Mustafi (NASA Goddard). He continued,
The development of advanced MLI that
uses polymer spacers instead of netting
used for conventional MLI could enable a
number of cryogenic storage and transfer
options for cryostats.
Jason Hartwig (NASA Glenn Research Center) cited another recent development, the demonstration of zero boiloff
(ZBO) for liquid oxygen at 91K for an
indefinite time. All future manned space
applications (including large upper stages,
cryogenic fuel depots, sample return missions and ascent stages) will benefit from
zero (not reduced) boiloff of the cryogen.
Having recently demonstrated that we can
store a 90K cryogen indefinitely represents
a huge impact in cryocooler
technology development.

The most important advancement in cryocoolers from


my perspective, that being the
storage of cryogenic propellants, said David Plachta
(NASA Glenn Research CenMany of our respondents
ter), is the NICMOS reverse
consider the pulse tube cryoturbo-Brayton cycle machine.
cooler an important developThis flight cryocooler and its
ment. Pulse tube cryocoolers
derivatives offer the potential
have been extremely popular
to eliminate propellant boilAn antique Cryomech pulse tube cooler from 1965 Image: M. Bradley
for the last decade or so for
off in space, enabling depot
both commercial and space
concepts and human missions
applications, said Radebaugh. Research
The pulse tube implementation of architecture plans being considered by
on them continues today as the most the Stirling thermodynamic cycle with no NASA.
studied cryocooler because of the lack of moving parts, as pioneered by Ray Radecold moving parts and the wide range of baugh, enables smaller, long life space
improvements that are possible. 4K pulse cryocoolers at higher temperatures, Important contributors
Radebaugh recognized a number of
tube cryocoolers are having a major im- said Dale Durand (Northrop Grumpact on eliminating the use of scarce liq- man Aerospace Systems). He considers important contributors to cryocooler and

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

16

www.cryogenicsociety.org

cryostat technology. Several people and


institutions appear to have been responsible for the development of MLI, he said.
An entire session of the 1959 CEC (Vol.
5) was devoted to MLI as it suddenly exploded on the scene in about 1958-1959.
P. Peterson of the University of Lund in
Sweden is credited with the concept of
multilayers of aluminum foil and glass
wool spacers that had remarkable insulating qualities. His work occurred in 1951
but was not noticed much until several
years later. Some leaders in the 1958-1959
development period were R. H. Kropschot
of NBS in Boulder, L. C. Matsch
of Linde-Union Carbide Corporation and M. P. Hnilicka of NRC
Equipment Corporation.
As the name indicates,
Radebaugh said, William Gifford and Howard McMahon
were the important figures in
the development of the GiffordMcMahon cryocooler. Gifford
was the leader in the innovations and the technical input and
McMahon was the driving force
behind the commercialization of
the cryocooler. The introduction
of spherical rare earth powders
by Toshiba and the pioneering 4K work by T. Kuriyama of
Toshiba were instrumental in the
development of 4K GM and GMtype pulse tube cryocoolers.

one of the key scientists in the development of pulse tube cooler technology,
said Kashani. He has been instrumental
in advancing our understanding of the
physics of pulse tube coolers as well as developing analytical and experimental tools
to study these coolers. He has also helped
in educating and training many of the scientists working on pulse tube coolers.
Ray Radebaugh deserves much
credit for advancing the field and educating/guiding so many professionals making additional advances, Durand agreed.

ware package. Their contributions include


not just the software for modeling cryocoolers, but the documentation that gives
excellent basic instruction in the relevant
physics. Their codes are also useful for
modeling many other mechanical, acoustic
and thermal devices besides cryocoolers.
Mustafi and Plachta both credited
Creare, Inc., which is working to develop
a spaceflight cryocooler that lifts 20 W at
20K. Plachta cited the company and its
lead technologist, Mark Zagarola, as being
the driving force behind this advance.
Hartwig recognized Mark Zagarola and Dave Plachta.
Mustafi also named Quest
Thermal Group, which he said
is developing advanced MLI
insulation under guidance from
NASA.
Caughleys picks were Bill
Gifford of course, then Peter
Gifford for building the business. Chao Wang sits quietly
behind Cryomech and has been
the source of its recent technical
success.

Future developments
Dr. Ray Radebaugh with a pulse tube cryocooler. Image: NIST
Boulder

William Gifford was also an important figure in the development of pulse


tube cryocoolers, Radebaugh added.
Even though the type he developed was
not successful for cryogenic temperatures,
he introduced the concept of the empty
tube in the 1960s, the pulse tube that
laid the groundwork for the later version
to come in the early 1980s in which an
orifice was introduced to the system by
E. I. Mikulin. Many improvements have
been made since then by many people.
The field of thermoacoustics has greatly
matured as a result of the pulse tube cryocooler and related thermoacoustic devices,
due in large part to Greg Swift. 4K pulse
tube cryocoolers have become very successful because of the pioneering work of
G. Thummes and C. Wang.
Other cryocooler experts cited Radebaugh himself as an important contributor
to the field. Dr. Ray Radebaugh has been

Kittel also cited E. I. Mikulin, as well


as A. A. Tarasov and M. P. Shrebyonock,
authors of the paper Low-temperature
expansion pulse tube, Adv Cry Eng
29 (1984), p. 629. This is the first paper
describing the orifice pulse tube, he explained. It showed a significant advance
over the basic pulse tube (1963) of Longsworth and Gifford. By 1983, almost all
interest in pulse tubes had died because
the basic pulse tube was very inefficient
[and] never found a practical application.
This paper reinvigorated the field, showing an efficient pulse tube could be developed, which led to the rapid developments
of the 80s and 90s.
Because of their special importance
of common language to collaboration,
said Spoor, I would single out David
Gedeon (of Gedeon Associates), creator of
the Sage software package, and Greg Swift
and Bill Ward (of Los Alamos National
Laboratory), creators of the DeltaEC soft-

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

17

Our member panel hopes to


see a variety of developments in
cryocooler and cryostat technology in the future.

MLI has one disadvantage in that


it is difficult to apply, said Radebaugh.
Something easier to apply and at a lower
cost would be a great improvement.
He continued, Variable speed drives
for GM compressors are beginning to be
introduced now. I also would like to see
increased efficiencies and reduced noise
from these compressors.
A significant development in pulse
tubes would be that of really miniature
pulse tube cryocoolers employing much
higher frequencies, warm displacers, and
a regenerator packing with very small
hydraulic diameter, Radebaugh continued. Another important need is 4K pulse
tube cryocoolers with Carnot efficiencies
considerably higher than 1 percent, which
could be possible with a much better un(Continued on page 18)

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Technology Focus...

Continued from page 17

derstanding of the losses at 4K in regenerators and pulse tubes.


Kashani noted, Advancing regenerator technologies to improve efficiency of
pulse tube coolers is one area that would
be beneficial for many applications requiring cryogenic cooling. Kittel also hopes to
see increased efficiency, especially in the
4-10K range, as it would reduce dependence on helium as well as reducing the
power consumption of superconducting
machines.
Of course I see hope in my work for
the future, the metal diaphragm pressure
wave generator coupled to a pulse tube or
Stirling cold head, said Caughley. It is a
really cost-effective and robust cryocooler
for industrial uses.
Spoor acknowledged that in the codes
he considers to be an important development, one of their biggest limitations is
that they are essentially one-dimensional;
they assume uniform pressure and flow

along the computation axis. In the future,


it would be very exciting to see computational fluid dynamics reach a state of maturity and speed of execution to enable us
to look at 2- and 3-D effects in cryocooler
designs, including the sensitivity of designs to small manufacturing flaws.

ZBO LH2 demonstration, both on the


ground and in flight. To those who have
been working in cryogenics at NASA GRC
for the past 30 years, this represents the
top, key milestone in cryogenics: being
able to store the highest efficiency propellant indefinitely.

Advances in cryocooler manufacturing also interest Durand. New 3-D


printing-type manufacturing may enable
us to break through the current limitations
in the design trades between thermodynamic optimum solutions and structural
requirements by allowing designs that are
currently impossible to manufacture, he
said.

The development of cryocoolers that


lift 100-500 W at 90K, coupled with the
20 W at 20K cryocooler, will allow for
long-term ZBO active storage of cryogenics propellants such as liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, said Mustafi.
The demonstration of advanced MLI on
space flight missions and on large flight
tanks with appropriate penetrations will
increase the technology readiness level
of these types of insulation to be used
for long-term storage and transfer of
cryogens. This technology, coupled with
advances in subcooling technology, may
even enable the long-term ZBO passive
storage of cryogenic propellants such as
liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

In the future, Plachta would like to see


a high performing broad area cooled shield
within the MLI that thermally insulates a
LH2 propellant tank, as well as improvements to the modeling and prediction of
cryocooler parasitic losses and the reduction of those losses. Hartwig hopes to see

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

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www.cryogenicsociety.org

TECHNOLOGY FOCUS

How Lab-Based ADR Cryostats


Support Our Quest to
Understand the Universe
by Charlie Danaher, Vice President, High Precision Devices, cdanaher@hpd-online.com

South Pole Telescope (SPT). Image: Jason


Austermann

Astronomers and cosmologists are


eternally curious about our universe. This
curiosity motivates ever more sophisticated observation methods. Land-based
telescopes continue to be one of the main
instruments employed to study the sky.
The receivers (or cameras)the part of
the instrument where the light is converted
to electrical signalson these telescopes is
where many of the advances in hardware
are taking place. Some of the recent work
has been concentrated on developing cryogenic polarimeters and multi-chroic pixels.
Scientists have developed large arrays of
such detectors, which are extremely sensitive to light coming from the sky.

SPT polarization focal plane during initial


deployment in early 2012. Images: Jason
Austermann

A Fourier transform spectrometer being used


to measure the spectral response of detectors
located inside the Model 104 ADR cryostat at
CU-CASA
Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

These advances are pursuing better


measurements of the polarization and
amplitude of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. These improved
measurements can lead to a more complete
understanding of aspects of the universe
such as neutrino physics, inflation and
gravitational waves, to name just a few.

But long before these sensitive detector arrays are deployed in telescopes
around the globe, years of development
and testing occurs in the laboratory. Prototype componentsincluding cryogenic
detectors, feedhorn-waveguide assemblies
and thevarious electronicsare placed
into laboratory cryostats for characterization and testing.
The HPD Model 104 Olympus ADR
cryostat has been used extensively at the
University of Colorado by the Center for
Astrophysics and Space Astronomy (CUCASA, one of the collaborating institutions
working at the South Pole Telescope [SPT]).
The most attractive feature of the Olympus
cryostat is its large experimental volume.
Inside the 3K radiation shield, scientists
can take advantage of a volume measuring 17" in diameter and 23" in height. The
Model 104 commonly configured is a twostage adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator (ADR) with base temperatures near
30mK, and typical operating temperature
around 100mK.

Section view of HPD Model 104 Olympus

20

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Among the telescope observatories pursuing such research, and which have been either
directly or indirectly supported by research at
CU-CASA, are the SPT, a 10-meter-diameter
telescope located at the Amundsen-Scott South
Pole Station, Antarctica; the Atacama Cosmology
Telescope (ACT), a six-meter telescope on Cerro
Toco in the Atacama Desert in the north of Chile;
and POLARBEAR, a CMB polarization experiment also located in the Atacama Desert.

Improved detector designs lead to


compressed observation runs
One of the biggest pushes in detector advancement is toward the goal of compressing
observation time. If a telescope can collect the
same amount of information as before but in a
fraction of the time, or if more information can
be gathered for a given observation period as
compared to a previous setup, such improvement can both reduce exploration costs as well
as bring closer a more complete understanding of
the universe. Multi-chroic pixels, having several
detectors each, multiply the amount of information gathered, for a given time period, without
any cryogenic cost.

Hopkins University
that will be deployed
to a high-altitude site
in the Atacama Desert
as part of the Parque
Astronmico de Atacama in 2015. The
CLASS experiment
aims to test the theory
of cosmic inflation and
distinguish between
inflationary models
of the very early universe by making precise measurements of
the polarization of the
CMB.

Computer-generated rendering of the future CLASS


experiment deployed to a high-altitude site in the Atacama
Desert of Chile. Image: CLASS collaboration

CLASS scientists
at Johns Hopkins University have employed the Model 104 ADR cryostat to
test and guide the development of a new
design of detectors that will eventually
be employed in the CLASS telescopes.
In a just a few years, novel detector
arrays currently being validated in the

laboratory will see their first implementation at these telescopes. Their observation data will advance our knowledge of
the structure and history of the universe.
HPD is proud to contribute to this noble
effort by providing physicists with the
basic instruments needed to perform
such exciting research.

The Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) is an array of microwave telescopes currently under construction at Johns

Model 104 hosting optical testing of detectors at


John Hopkins University. Image: David Larson,
CLASS collaboration
Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

21

www.cryogenicsociety.org

SPOTLIGHT ON SUSTAINING MEMBER

Master Bond Supreme 12AOHT-LO Passes Testing


for NASA Low Outgassing
upon cure. Supreme 12AOHT-LO
is resistant to a variety of chemicals,
particularly to water, oil, fuels and
solvents.

Master
Bond
Supreme
12AOHT-LO is a one-component
epoxy for a variety of bonding
and sealing applications in the
aerospace, electronic, electro-optic
and OEM industries. This system
fully passes ASTM E595 testing for
NASA low outgassing and is well
suited for vacuum environments.
As a toughened epoxy, Supreme 12AOHT-LO resists rigorous
thermal cycling and shocks over the
wide service temperature range of
4K to +500F. It offers high thermal
conductivity of 9-10 BTU in/ft2 hr F
and is a competent electrical insulator.
This epoxy bonds well to an array
of substrates including metals, composites, glass, rubbers, ceramics and many

plastics. This compound delivers high


tensile lap shear, compressive and peel
strengths exceeding 3,500 psi, 22,000 psi
and 5-10 pli, respectively. It is dimensionally stable and has low shrinkage

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

22

Supreme 12AOHT-LO is a
thixotropic paste with a smooth
consistency that is easy to handle.
As a single component epoxy, it
doesnt require any mixing and
offers an unlimited working life
at room temperature. It cures rapidly at elevated temperatures. This
gray-colored system can be stored
at ambient temperatures, but maximum shelf life is achieved when
it is refrigerated at 45-55F. Supreme
12AOHT-LO is available in syringes,
half pints, pints, quarts, gallons and
5 gallon containers. www.masterbond.
com

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Cold Cases
by Dr. Bill Schwenterly, retired Oak Ridge National Laboratory, schwenterly@ieee.org

Piping System Challenges

ryogenic installations often require some sort of piping system that may have to operate
over a wide range of temperatures. The
pipes may operate at room temperature,
where they perhaps supply vacuum
pumping and purging or pressurization to a dewar or cryostat, or provide
helium gas connections between a compressor and a liquefier or refrigerator
cold head. Some parts of the system
may also have to provide heated gas for
warming the equipment or regenerating
purifier beds. Other parts may be carrying liquid cryogens or cold gas.
If pressure drops must be minimized, you will either need to make
the installation as compact as possible
to reduce the pipe lengths or use larger
diameter piping. In earlier columns (see
Cold Facts Volume 29 Number 3 and
Volume 31 Number 1) I have discussed
how to calculate pressure drops in gases
or liquids for single-phase flow versus
pipe length and diameter. For vacuum,
the pipes need to be sized to give the
desired pumpdown time and ultimate
pressure. This is determined by the
volume of the system, the speed of the
available vacuum pump in the viscous
and molecular flow regimes, and the
expected outgassing rate of the internal
surfaces. Ill leave the details on selecting vacuum piping sizes for another
column.
In determining the layout of your
system, be sure to think three-dimensionally. You want to have all attached
equipment such as valves, instrumentation feedthroughs, vacuum jacket
gauges and relief devices in accessible
locations where you can easily operate
and maintain them.
At ORNL I once worked with a
young engineer who produced a beautiful set of drawings for the piping
between a helium compressor and liq-

uefier. However, when the piping was


installed, we found that several valves
were located up near the ceiling and
could only be reached with a stepladder! In another case, we received a set of
vacuum jacketed lines from a manufacturer and discovered that several of the
vacuum gauges on vertical runs were
high out of reach where it was very difficult to service their connecting cables
or replace them when they failed. Renderings by modern 3-D CAD systems
will help you avoid problems like this.

For the lowest


temperatures,
vacuum jacketed
piping with MLI
reflective barriers
is required.

Piping that carries cryogenic gases


or liquids will require thermal insulation
for efficient operation. For temperatures
near 77K, commercial piping with plastic foam insulation is usually the most
economical option for large systems.
For a small laboratory system, you can
likely get away with foam rubber insulation sleeves like the ones used on airconditioning lines. These can be easily
formed around bends and secured with
electrical tape. Fiberglass insulation
sleeves are commercially available for
hot gas systems.
For the lowest temperatures, vacuum jacketed piping with multilayer
insulation (MLI) reflective barriers is
required. Check with prospective manufacturers to find out the heat loads for
rigid sections, flex sections and bayonet
connections. Be sure to leave proper

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

23

clearances for the bayonets in assembling the systemyou dont want to get
to the last piece and discover that you
dont have enough clearance to the wall
to slide its bayonet into the mating fitting. Also keep in mind that most bayonets have the lowest heat load if they
are installed with the male half pointing
downward. Piping sections with bayonets that are at angles to each other are
basically locked in place. If you cant
slide the equipment on either end of the
piping away for disassembly, its a good
idea to have a U-shaped piece in the
system with parallel bayonets that can
slide out easily to allow you to remove
the other pieces.
All piping systems should have
proper relief devices sized to prevent
damaging overpressures. For cryogenic
piping, it is particularly important to
install thermal relief devices on all sections that could be isolated between two
valves, if both valves were closed with
liquid or cold gas in the system, to prevent excessive pressures from developing as the system warms up.
All joints and connections should
be leak-checked carefully, preferably
in subassemblies, before putting everything together. Be sure that the last
few unchecked joints between subassemblies are located where you can
get to them easily if they leak. Clean the
interior of the lines with solvent before
assemblythis is particularly important
for vacuum lines. Special cleaning procedures are needed for piping in oxygen
service to prevent explosion hazards.
Baking may be required for lines that
operate at very high vacuum. Finally,
you want to pump and purge your system with clean process gas carefully before you cool it down. If you cool down
a system with ambient air in it, all the
moisture in the air is likely to freeze at
the first point that gets below 0C and
plug the line.
www.cryogenicsociety.org

June 24-26, 2015

26th
SPACE CRYOGENICS

Embassy Suites Phoenix-Biltmore,


Phoenix, Arizona USA

Workshop

Register now at
http://2csa.us/space
Early registration ends May 1
Online registration ends June 21

Make your hotel reservations by May 27 to receive the special workshop rate!

Sponsored by

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a division of the Cryogenic Society of America

Cryoco LLC

Developments We Most Wish to See


What development would you most
like to see happen in your area of expertise in cryogenics and superconductivity?
We asked this question of CSA members and received an eclectic collection of
replies, some very short and some longer, all of which are thought-provoking
and represent the variety and depth of
our membership. Do any of these wishes
pique your interest? Are you working on
one of these issues or are you interested in
contributing to the discussion? We invite
responses from our readers.

Some Cryogenics Wishes


Richard Reineman, VP at GWR Instruments, Inc., wishes for a smaller,
lower power 4.2K cryocooler. Anything
under 500 watts input power would be
great. I only need 3050 mw of output
power at 4.2K and assuming a two-stage
smaller, lower system, I also need
power 4.2K about 2 watts at 30
50K at the same time.
cryocoolers GM or Stirling cycle
look the most promising. Presently the GMs are too big for
most applications and the Stirling cycle
machines are only single stage and will not
get down to 4.2K. He adds, I see endless
possibilities for such a device to cool and
keep cold superconducting sensors! This
would expand my market 100- to 1,000fold over what I can reach with the present
1.5 Kw input systems that put out 200 mw
at 4.2K and 6 w at 50K.
Valves are the concern of Nate Paxton,
TBV product manager at Cameron: One
area of development many people would
like to see pertains to valvesespecially
as it pertains to 1/4-turn motion where
there is sliding friction between the sealing
components. This type of valve is specified globally
for cryogenic
research into metal service on
seated valves and many enduser specifiengineered coatings cations. In the
past, resilient
seats were called out (PTFE based or KEL
F as examples), but now, metal seated
valves are being called out more and more
for cold temperature/cryogenic service.

There are reasons for thisbut I wont get


into that now.
Any time there is metal to metal
contact (between the ball and the seats
of the valve) for any service, most people
would prefer to use some type of hard
surface treatment (such as boronization)
or applied coating to reduce friction and
to create a better seal. Thermal swings
from ambient temperatures to cold are
not favorable to coatings. The repeated
contraction and expansion of a coating in
relation to the base metal causes it to chip
and delaminate over time. So, any research
into metal seated valves and engineered
coatingswhat works and what doesnt
would be very desirable for the cryogenic/
cold service industries.
Our request got David-John Roth,
principal of Cryoco LLC, thinking. He sent
us two wishes; he thinks perhaps we could
tackle them in Cold Facts. First, I would
like to see an article about mass spectrometer leak testing using gaseous helium
for various cryogenic piping components
that are welded in various places.

a good handle on
what getter materials
should be used for
general cryo fluids
versus hydrogen and
oxygen specifically
Roth went into detail on his second
wish: One additional topic that plagues
real working cryogenic engineers [could
be covered by] a concise article on vacuum
gettering materials and calculations. We
usually leave it up to manufacturers to use
what they use. But as design engineers the
subject is so diffuse and the calculations
on how much of each possible getter material per vacuum jacketed item (pipe spool,
field can and other custom components)
are so complex that we never ever have an
answer we can all agree on. I have a couple
of articles, one by Glen McIntosh in an old
CSA Cold Facts, that came really close. It
was good but had a few gaps. I have to
revisit this topic almost every four months
at some place with some group.

What we lack is: 1) A good handle on


what getter materials should be used for
general cryo fluids versus hydrogen and
oxygen specifically.
2) What is getter material versus converter (hydrogen) material.
3) How does one calculate the necessary quantities of each getter/converter
material based on the basic double wall
stainless inner, carbon steel outer shell,
construction for VJ with a basic 32 layer
MLI insulation. Forget the other complicated struts and wire leads to make calculation simple.
4) So, how to calculate the grams
of each per VJ area, a formula, a rule of
thumb, something to get a handle on how
much of the commercially available materials to use.
On the topic of helium refrigeration,
we heard from Guy Gistau Bauger, Cryoguy, formerly of Air Liquide. Since I am
retired (2000), I still have, as a hobby, some
activity in cryogenics. As I am now providing consulting and education, I am mainly
dealing with users and operators of cryogenic systems. This means that I switched
from my former position of a supplier (I
was in charge of helium refrigeration at
Air Liquide) to that of a user.
In 1980, I started developing an
automatic helium liquefier/refrigerator,
HELIAL. At this time, the available hardware and software were, compared to
todays, rather primitive (limited capabilities as to memory size, number of control
loops, calculation, etc.). We
control
had to make smarter
trade-offs but systems that could
did succeed in
achieving sat- inform the operator
isfactory oper- about the system
ation. In 2015,
35 years later, status through his
seen from my
or her smartphone
present customer point of
view, I have the feeling that the process
control systems do not take advantage
of the incredible progress that has been
made.
(Continued on page 26)

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

25

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Developments...

Continued from page 25

I would most like to see, as standard equipment, smarter control systems that could be really automatic,
perform diagnostics, be able to take
care of some imperfect settings, and
inform the operator about the system
status through his/her smartphone.
A very specific wish came from
Sastry Pamidi of the Center for Advanced Power Systems at FSU: A large
capacity
W)
an ultraminiature (300-600
cryocooler
coaxial cable with a which goes
to 10-15K
BeCu or S/S central that does
conductor for use not require
periodic
from <4K to 800K m a i n t e nance and
has high efficiency (>40%) and does not
require water cooling. Many superconducting applications will benefit from
such a cryocooler.

Daniel Logan, senior sales engineer at Janis Research Company, told


us hed like two things: [An] ultraminiature coaxial cable with a BeCu or
SS central conductor for use from <4K
to 800K. The cable could be flexible
or semi-rigid, and the outer diameter
should be 0.085" or less for minimal
heat load. Ideally we could install our
own connectors, but the option to buy
the cable with BNC and SMA connectors installed would be good.
Logans second wish: Single inline pin (SIP) sockets or dual inline pin
(DIP) sockets that can survive up to
800K. Not the DIP chip itselfthese are
available already. Just the receptacle
into which the DIP chip is connected.
Citing the great future of cryogenics as an enabling technology, yet lamenting that it has a low profile and
is underappreciated, John Vandore,
Cryox Ltd., attributed this in part to
the lack of a Standard Industry Clas-

sification Code for cryogenicsso there is less


data collected compared with other sectors or
technologies like electronics that do have an SIC
code and so they measure those industry stats
to death. Maybe one day when we grow up, we
can have an SIC code, too.
Thats what Id like for
a cooling system
Christmas!

incorporating

Neil Glasson, senior


research engineer at Cal- solid nitrogen
laghan Innovation, told
us, I only wish that there were an elegant, reliable and cheap way to safely employ solid nitrogen as a temperature regulating buffer within a
liquid nitrogen cooling system. This could be very
useful for many applications of HTS where it is
often desirable to regulate the temperature near
the melting point of nitrogen rather than near
the boiling point. Design of HTS power supply
equipment in particular (cables, transformers,
fault current limiters, etc.) often relies on having
the liquid nitrogen sub-cooled and pressurized
in order to both optimize the current carrying
capacity of the superconductor and to produce
satisfactory dielectric insulation performance of
the liquid nitrogen.
Glasson added, A cooling system incorporating solid nitrogen could also smooth cooling
demand and require smaller cryocooler capacity
or allow greater flexibility of cryocooler control.
There are some particularly challenging aspects of
combining solid
and liquid nitrogen. Solid nitro- a safe chemical liquid
gen doesnt flow for reactivating LN
2
well or necessarphase
separator
tips
ily stay where you
might expect it to,
so heat transfer and fluid flow can be difficult to
predict. There is some literature describing solid
nitrogen use in cooling superconducting devices,
but there is much scope for further development.
We received this wish from Moyses Kuchnir,
retired from Fermilab: I have designed and built
dilution refrigerators and superfluid containers
for accelerator superconducting components. But,
now retired, I am a consultant on liquid N2 for
my sons dermatology clinic. I only wish that I
knew about a safe chemical liquid for reactivating LN2 phase separator tips. These tips are installed in the end of tubes used for the transfer
of liquid nitrogen from a pressurized container
to a smaller unpressurized container. The N2 gas
flows through and the liquid N2 drips by gravity in the smaller container. The porous part of
the tips is made by sintering copper or brass tiny
spheres. With use the surface of the tiny spheres

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

26

www.cryogenicsociety.org

gets a coating that eventually plugs the tip, rendering it inoperative. I imagine that a sealed oven with hydrogen gas in it would
reactivate them, but this is not a field solution.

About to buy a dry


c
optical cryostat?

Three wishes from Jacob Leachman, assistant professor,


Washington State University: 1) For the CEC proceedings to
have an option for submission in a peer reviewed journal, not a
conference proceedings. (Its important for us academics!) At the
very least, review the proceedings and award some submissions
with full journal publication.
2) For the national academies to release a report emphasizing the importance of cryogenics to national security (similar to
their recent report on the need for plasma engineers). This report
needs to emphasize the importance of training engineers with
cryogenic design expertise. I keep getting phone calls from companies and labs desperate to hire someone whos trained and
domestic, but I have no one to recommend.
3) Small-modular
hydrogen liquefaction
small-modular hydrogen with efficiency better
liquefaction with efficiency than 30% of Carnot. This
would kickstart the US
better than 30% of Carnot hydrogen economy, which
will almost totally rely on
cryogenics for the first two decades. This will also reaffirm the
importance of cryogenics with the general public.

Dont do
anything until
til
youve seen
the new
OptistatDry
ry

Some Superconductivity Wishes

Versatile
ble
Upgradeable
Optical

As a researcher in cryogenics, I wish people will never


discover room-temperature superconductivity. As a physicist,
however, I would wish they do As a pessimist, I would say
they need to hurry because of global warming! These are the
sentiments of Marcel ter Brake, University of Twente.

excellence

Simple to use

Marty Nisenoff, retired from the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, told us, It would be very impressive
if, in 2015, a thin film integrated device technology were demonstrated using high temperature superconductors which could
result in the fabrication of large number of Josephson junctions on
a chip with very high (near 100 percent) yield and with parameter
spreads of less than several percent. This would facilitate the development of a larger number of electronic applications of high
temperature superconductivity, such as sensors, amplifiers and
passive circuit elements and even possibly digital computing.

GO!

Ralph Scurlock, Kryos Associates, retired from University of


Southampton, asks, What has happened to the superconducting
dream? In my History and Origins of Cryogenics of 1992, I wrote
a final chapter on the future of cryogenics and the many applications which I predicted would grow. Most of my predictions have
turned out to be correct, except one. The expected expansion of
superconductivity into the electric power industry has fallen by
the wayside. Why? The industrial scale of superconducting applications has been established by CERN with the LHC, and now
by Caderache with ITER. The experience being developed should
be enabling the electric power industries to make enormous advances in large energy storage systems, cryogenic power cables,
fault current limiters, etc. However, my dream of 1992 is still a
dream.
Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

Call or email us today


US/Canada: +1 800 447 4717
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Space Cryogenics
by Dr. Peter Shirron, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, peter.shirron@nasa.gov

James Webb Space Telescope Is Becoming a Reality

hen the James Webb Space


Telescope (JWST) was first
conceived in the mid-1990s, it
was to be as revolutionary in its cryogenics design as it was in the science capability of its instruments. After almost 20
years, and a far larger investment than the
original $500 million price tag, the flight
instrument is nearing completion and the
scheduled launch in 2018 appears realistic.
The JWST mission will answer fundamental questions about the formation and
evolution of galaxies, stars and planets
and the re-ionization of the early universe.
To do this, its four science instruments
MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera), NIRSpec
(Near-Infrared Spectrometer) and FGS
(Flight Guidance Sensor)will perform
both imaging and spectroscopy from the
mid-infrared just into the visible band (in
wavelength, from 28 microns to about 600
nm). To observe some of the oldest and
most distant objects in the universe, the
telescope must be able to collect light over
a very large area; hence, the primary will
have a diameter of 6.5 meters and a collecting area of more than 25 square meters.
Cryogenics is vital to JWSTs objectives, as it is necessary for the telescope
and instruments to be cooled to below 50K
in order to prevent thermal emission from
the mirrors and other components from
contaminating the signals from celestial
sources. And while the majority of the instruments can operate with the required
resolution at about 35K, the mid-infrared
instrument, MIRI, requires cooling to a
much lower temperature6K. This will
be accomplished by a pulse tube/JouleThomson cryocooler made by NorthrupGrumman.
With a primary mirror far larger than
anything previously launched, JWST fully
embraced the open architecture concept in
which the telescope and instruments are
not contained within the vacuum environment of a dewar, but in the vacuum
of space. This basic concept was success-

fully implemented on the Spitzer Space


Telescope, but JWST takes it to a whole
other level.
Spitzer used both radiative cooling
and a tank of superfluid helium to cool
the 0.85-meter-diameter telescope, which
could fit within the confines of the Delta
II rockets fairing. On JWST, the telescope
and instruments are radiatively cooled by
maintaining a constant view to deep space
and using a multilayer sunshield to block
solar radiation. JWSTs telescope is so
large, though, that the enormous sunshield
needed to protect it thermally doesnt even
come close to fitting into a rocket fairing.
So how do you launch an instrument
thats as big a tennis court? You fold it up

1a

very carefully. You add hinges and latches


and pulleys and extension mechanisms,
and you fold the telescope and sunshield
over on themselves until they fit into the
space you have. The challenge is enormous
and has never been attempted before. The
sunshield alone has more than 100 pin actuators holding it in place for launch, and
about half that number of additional actuators are needed for stowing and deploying
the telescopes side mirrors, secondary
mirror boom and the sunshield supports.
All of this must work flawlessly in order
for JWST to emerge from its cocoon after
launch and reach its final configuration.
This will happen in stages during the
satellites long journey to L2. An animation
of the full deployment sequence can be

1b

1c

1d

JWST deployment: (1a) The fully stowed configuration, (1b) sunshield support frame deployed,
(1c) unfolding and tensioning of the sunshield, (1d) fully deployed telescope. Images: JWST

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

28

www.cryogenicsociety.org

found on the JWST web site (http://2csa.


us/jwst) and on YouTube (http://2csa.us/
d9). At bottom left we show just the major
steps, from the fully stowed configuration
(1a) to extending the support frame (1b) to
unfolding and tensioning the aluminized
kapton layers (1c) to deploying the secondary mirror and side segments of the
primary (1d).
What makes JWST particularly challenging is that its sheer size precludes
testing many of the critical functions and
assemblies in a flight-like configuration.
There is no thermal vacuum facility large
enough to accommodate the full instrument so that the sunshield and other radiative structures can be verified fully,
and gravity effects cannot be eliminated
during deployment tests. A significant effort is therefore being invested in testing
individual subsystems to gain confidence
in their performance and to validate thermal models.
Recent milestones include the successful deployment test of the sunshield at
Northrup-Grumman in October 2014 (see

photos, page 30) and of the secondary mirror boom at NASA/Goddard Space Flight
Center (GSFC). Videos of the sunshield
and mirror boom deployment tests can be
found at http://jwst.nasa.gov/sunshield.
html and http://2csa.us/da.
Preparations are underway at NASA/
Johnson Space Center (JSC) for testing
the mirror and instrument package. This
will eventually include the flight mirrors,
which have already been delivered by Ball
Aerospace to GSFC, and the module containing the four instruments, which has
also been assembled and extensively tested
at GSFC. The instrument assembly will
undergo vibration testing in April of this
year, after which they will be retested to
verify no change in performance, and sent
for integration with the telescope. During
this same time, the flight telescope backplane will be delivered to GSFC, at which
point the mirror segments will be installed.
Integration of the instrument assembly and
telescope is expected to occur in early 2016.
Full-scale telescope and instrument
tests will then be conducted in Chamber

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

29

A at JSC, a 40-foot-diameter, 60-foot-tall


thermal vacuum chamber with an internal shroud cooled by a massive turboexpander cooler to 10-15K, simulating
the background of space. The chamber is
outfitted with the Center of Curvature Optical Assembly, or COCOA, that is used to
verify the shape of each mirror segment at
cryogenic temperature.
In late 2014 the JSC chamber underwent commissioning tests to verify that the
thermal environment it provides is correct.
Complicating matters is that the COCOA
must operate at room temperature and
imposes large radiative loads when in use.
Consequently, the chamber includes an
MLI shutter to isolate it from the mirror assembly for most of the testing. Radiometers
developed at GSFC that measure total radiative flux over a narrow field of view (about
10 degrees) are stationed around the chamber to measure emission from the chamber
itself and that of instrument components.
Using a mass simulator for the instrument,
the commissioning has successfully verified
(Continued on page 30)

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Space Cryogenics...

Continued from page 29

that the chamber can achieve the temperature and vacuum conditions required for flight
component testing.
The next steps are two sub-scale tests of the non-flight mirror segments and a thermal-mass simulator in preparation for testing of the flight telescope and instrument packagein true NASA form, this assembly is called OTIS, which is a combination of the OTE
(Optical Telescope Element) and the ISIM (Integrated Science Instrument Module). (On
JWST, even the acronyms have acronyms!) It is expected that testing at JSC will continue
through late 2017, at which point OTIS will be shipped to Northrup-Grumman in California to be assembled with the spacecraft bus and sunshield. Final (limited) tests of the
whole observatory will precede shipping JWST to French Guiana in the late summer of
2018. Launch is planned for October 2018.
JWST will launch from an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, into a halo
orbit at L2. The cruise phase lasts about one month, during which the sunshield and
telescope will be fully
deployed. By then,
2a
JWST will have been a
22-year, 8 billion dollar investment. You
can bet there will be
some nervous engineers, scientists and
managers watching as
JWST begins to unfold.
Hopefully they will be
able to breathe a huge
sigh of relief when its
2b
all over.
Sunshield deployment
test: (2a) stowed
sunshield, (2b) unfolded
sunshield, (2c) fully
tensioned sunshield.
Images: JWST

2c

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

30

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Cryo-Oops

Important lessons learned from past mistakes


by John Jurns, Senior Cryogenic Engineer, European Spallation Source, john.jurns@esss.se

Typical Cryogenic Contamination Problems

Whenever you have moving parts (for example, cryogenic pumps), there is risk for
something to break off and get into your
system. Particles can also be generated
by erosion: High velocity fluid traveling
through your system can erode materials.

have the habit of writing down notes


about possible topics for this article.
As I was looking though my notes this
month, I was struck by a theme that seems
to come up with remarkable regularity.
So what is that theme? Contamination.
Of course, contamination is a problem in
any engineered system, so cryogenics is
not unique in that regard. However, I can
say that there are some typical problems
with contamination in cryogenic systems
that can have particularly annoying consequences when they pop up.
Before I go any further, I think it is
important to define what we are talking
about. I picked up a dictionary and found
the following definition: Contaminate:
verb (used with object). To make impure
or unsuitable by contact or mixture with
something unclean, bad, etc. The point to
note here is that a contaminant is something that makes your system unsuitable
for its intended use. That is to say, you may
have something in your system that was
not intended to be there, but if it does not
have any negative impact on your system
or process, you may not need to worry too
much about it. On the other hand, we also
need to understand that what constitutes
a contaminant can be situational. That is,
some impurity may be inconsequential in
one case but detrimental in another. Ill
give an example of this later.

Background
The first thing to remember is that
we live in an imperfect world. Practically,
there really is no substance that does not
have some impurity in it. The question to
consider is to what degree or amount does
an impurity exist, and if that amount of
contaminant is a problem.
What constitutes a contaminant? In
cryogenic systems, contaminants generally consist of:
Particulates
Oils or hydrocarbons
Trace amounts of other gases

Figure 1: A pipe is half-filled with finegrained powder from the adsorber. Image:
STFC Daresbury Lab

Trace amounts of
gases are always
present in cryogenic
fluids due to the
nature of how they
are produced.
Moisture
Organic things (e.g., bugs)
Where can these contaminants come
from? Particulates can be introduced
into a system in many ways. One (very
preventable) way is just from sloppy procedures. An example of this could be a
transfer hose that has not been properly
protected from the environment. If the
hose connection is not capped when not
in use, dust and dirt can find their way
in. Believe it or not, I have seen cryogenic
transfer hoses dropped on the ground
after being disconnected from a dewar
without the end being capped first. Particulates can also be generated internally.

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

32

Oils or hydrocarbons can be introduced by equipment that is inherently a


part of your process. An example of this
is the warm compressor for a helium
cryoplant. Helium compressors are commercial equipment that require oil to seal
and lubricate rotating parts and operate
properly. Oil coalescing filters are included in these systems to remove traces
of oil before the helium gets to the cold
box. However, failure of these filters can
result in oil ending up in the cold section
of the plant and freezing and plugging
heat exchangers.
Trace amounts of gases are always
present in cryogenic fluids due to the nature of how they are produced. Producers
are careful to control the quality of their
product and advertise the purity in their
literature. However, having a leak or leaving a valve accidentally open in a subatmospheric system can result in ambient
air being sucked into the system. Moisture
can sneak into your system the same way.
If some part of your system operates at
sub-atmospheric pressure, if you suck in
air you will also be sucking in any water
that is in the air.
With moisture, again, transfer hoses
can be a problem. Disconnecting a hose
from your system before it warms up will
result in moisture from the air freezing out
onto your connection. Make sure the connection has warmed up and been cleaned
and dried before you plug it in to your
system again!
Organic thingsyou would be surprised what might crawl into your system.
Bugs and critters generally ignore warning signs when looking for a spot to make
themselves comfortable. That is to say,
keep your connections capped.

www.cryogenicsociety.org

remember the time we had to use pencils


and graph paper.
We looked at the purity specification
for the hydrogen that we were using and
found no reference to neon concentration.
We contacted the hydrogen supplier, and
they said that they never had any problems with neon reported and did not test
for it. We ran some simple calculations
to determine how much neon would be
required to plug up our J-T devices, and
it turned out that concentrations in the
parts-per-billion range were sufficient
to clog them. Being clever engineers, we
thought we would just buy an analyzer
to measure neon concentration, but when
we went to the market we found out that
there was no analyzer that had the sensitivity to measure in the ppb range.

Figure 2 : Decrease in LH2 flow rate in a Visco-Jet J-T device. Image: NASA Glenn Research
Center

A few examples
I mentioned in the last issue that I had
attended the Cryogenic Operations workshop at the STFC Daresbury Laboratory
outside Manchester, England. One of the
talks was about contamination problems
they had at their ALICE (Accelerators and
Lasers in Combined Experiments) facility.
The facility has a cryogenic helium
system that provides 2K cooling to a few
superconducting radiofrequency modules. They had some performance problems in 2013 that required changing out
an adsorber. After they put the system
back in operation, they continued to have
problems and finally had to shut down
the system again. They found carbon dust
in some of the piping and compressor oil
contaminating the cold box. The carbon
was from the adsorber and the particles
were small enough to escape from the adsorber into the downstream piping.
Typically, care has to be taken when
filling the refrigerator adsorber vessels to
remove any powder beforehand by sieving. Only pellets larger than a minimum
diameter should be used. However, cooling down or warming up the adsorber

pellet bed may generate some powder.


Apparently in this case the carbon pellets had broken down and produced this
powder. A picture of the piping cut open
is shown in Figure 1note the pipe is halffilled with fine-grained powder from the
adsorber.
I have what I think is an interesting
example of trace gas contaminants in a
liquid hydrogen experiment. Back in the
late 1980s, we were doing some tests on
Joule-Thomson (J-T) devices. We found
that under certain conditions these orifices
slowly plugged up. We could reset the
experiment and eliminate the clogging,
but we were not sure what was causing
it in the first place. We had proposed that
the clogging was due to trace amounts of
metastable, supercooled liquid neon in
the liquid hydrogen supply. The clogging
took place when our liquid hydrogen was
between 20.5K and 24.4K, and we noted
that the triple point temperature of neon
was 24.5K. I have included a chart from
the original tests performed at NASA
Glenn Research Center in 1988 in Figure 2 above. The quality of the image is
not very good, but I wanted to include a
hand-drawn chart for the old-timers who

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

33

So you can see that an impurity that


normally is totally innocuous can be a
problem under the right conditions. We
were not able to eliminate the neon, but
we were able to come up with a number
of mitigation strategies to deal with the
problem.
My last example is about bugs. Many
years ago, I was working with a liquid
hydrogen test facility. We at one point
inadvertently left a hose connection open.
The 1/2"-diameter hose was connected
back onto our system, but when we tried
to flow through it, it was plugged. We disconnected the hose and found it plugged
with what looked like cement. A little
more investigation revealed that it was
just mud. Apparently, a 1/2"-diameter
orifice is just about the right size to make
a cozy home for mud dauberssmall
wasps that build their homes using dirt.
Needless to say, we were then much more
careful about keeping our hoses capped!

Important things to remember


First of all, get it clean. That is, when
putting your system together, follow
proper procedures for cleaning. The Compressed Gas Association is a good resource
for standards to clean equipment for oxygen and for cryogenic service. Another
good reference for cleaning equipment for
cryogenic oxygen service is ASTM G93-03.
Your company or institute may also have
its own standards that must be followed.
(Continued on page 46)

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Research and Development of Large-Scale


Cryogenic Air Separation in China
by Limin Qiu, Xiaobin Zhang, Jianye Chen, and Xuejun Zhang, all from the Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics, Zhejiang University; Lei Yao,
Hangzhou Hangyang Co. Ltd.; and Yonghua Huang, Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Industrial gases such as oxygen (O2),


nitrogen (N2) and argon (Ar) can be regarded as the blood of modern industries
like the steelmaking and chemical product
industries, which are the worlds primary
users of the products of air separation
units (ASUs). At present, the production
of large quantities of high purity industrial
gases still mainly depends on a large-scale
cryogenic air separation method. Here, the
terminology large-scale means that the
O2 production of a single ASU is beyond
60,000 Nm3/h.

Development of Chinas
Cryogenic ASU Technology
At the beginning of 1953, the production capacity of an ASU was only 20 m3/h

O2 in China. After 60 years of development,


China now has the ability to produce a series of commercial ASU products with a capacity ranging from 20,000 to 100,000 m3/h.
Since 2011, the Hanyang Group, Chinas
largest air separation enterprise, has been
manufacturing a 120,000 m3/h ASU for
Iran Carvedilol Group.
Figure 1 presents the evolution of the
technology of the cryogenic air separation
industry in China during the past years.
In spite of its late development, China has
been catching up with the pace of international development through the independent innovation of ASUs since about
1986. From then on, air booster and high
pressure gas expansion processes with molecular sieve purification and distributed
control system (DCS) were developed and

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

34

applied. The extraction rate of O2 and Ar


reached 93-97% and 54-60% respectively in
that period. Significant progress was made
in 1996 with the application of the structured packing column, which has become
the most common-used facility nowadays.
Compared with the traditional sieve plate
column, the structured packing column has
the advantages of lower operation pressure
in the upper column and a higher efficiency
in the production of pure Ar; thus it assists
in lowering the overall power consumption and increases the extraction rate of
O2 to 97-99% and Ar to 65-84%. Since the
beginning of the 21st century, the internal
compression process with liquid oxygen
(LO2) pumps has begun to be widely used
to replace the traditional gaseous O2 compressor at room temperature to increase
high pressure O2 production. The internal

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Figure 1: Technological evolution of the cryogenic air separation industry in China

compression process has the advantages of


flexibility, reliability and safety.

past, ASUs at this level being assembled in


China had to rely on imports.

State-of-the-Art ASU in China

Problems and Prospects

Presently, air separation processes


comprise the following basic characteristics: molecular sieve adsorber; structured
packing column; fully distilled Ar production without hydrogen, external or internal
compression of N2 and O2 products; internal compression of liquid argon; and DCS
control. All of the above technologies are
currently being applied to Chinas modern
large-scale ASU with the features of high
loads, multi-conditions, automation, high
efficiency and reliability.

The domestic design and manufacture


of large-scale ASU has made tremendous
inroads in China, and the gap between
international and domestic technological knowledge has been greatly reduced.
However, comprehensive technological
differences still exist compared to abroad,
especially with regard to the construction
of 80,000 to 100,000 m3/h ASUs. For example, China has already qualified independent design and production of static
equipment and some dynamic equipment,
such as large-flow air compressor units,
but for other dynamic equipmentsuch as
turbo expanders, key cryogenic valves of
high pressure or large pressure difference,
large-flow high pressure cryogenic liquid
pumps and instrumentationthe reliance
on imported equipment persists. For reliable operation, the upper column and Ar
column of the 60,000 m3/h ASU are still
designed by the Swiss Sulzer company and
equipped with its PLUS packing for better
performance and reliability. Overall, there
is still much room to improve the scientific
and technological innovation capability.

In China, the mature 60,000 Nm3/h


ASU, which was produced by Hangyang
for the coal-to-alkene project in the city of
Baotou, can be taken as a chief example
to illustrate the present technological advancement of ASUs. In this unit, the structured packings are used in the main upper
and Ar columns, and the compressed air is
efficiently cooled by an evaporative cooling technology without the freezer. Other
technologies embedded include double bed
adsorption and two floors of condenser/
evaporator. The device successfully went
into operation in 2010 and is now operating
to produce O2 and LO2 with purity higher
than 99.6%, and O2 contents in liquid nitrogen (LN2) less than 10 ppm. The absolute pressure of O2 and N2 is 8.6 MPa and
0.9 MPa, respectively, and the extraction
ratios are > 99% for O2 and > 82% for Ar.
Although the specific power consumption
of 0.38 kWh/m3 O2 is slightly higher than
the international consumption of 0.28~0.3
kWh/m3, its advantages of proprietary
intellectual property and low price show
great significance to the industry, as in the

Currently, new technologies in air


separation equipment are still emerging,
such as the large double-layer radial flow
adsorber. Recently, the internal thermally
coupled approach has been extensively
studied, and its application to the distillation column air separation process has also
been proposed. Based on theoretical calculations, when compared to a conventional
thermal coupling column, the energysaving effects of the new method are very

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

(Continued on page 37)

35

www.cryogenicsociety.org

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Air Separation in China...


significant. These technological innovations are all based on a deep understanding
of the basic hydrodynamic and thermodynamic theories, as well as advanced experimental methods. Therefore, in order to be
on par with international standards, independent innovation should be encouraged.
On one hand, basic theoretical and experimental studies, such as two-phase flow
and heat and mass transfer in complex
structures, need to be further strengthened.
On the other hand, enterprises should actively change their management concept to
become suppliers of both facility and gas,
rather than only device providers. This will
lay the foundation for applications of new
technologies, because as gas suppliers, the
risk of damaged reputations and commercial disputes from setbacks or failures can
be minimized.
After more than two decades, and especially in the last decade or so, through
independent research, technology introduction, co-production and the improve-

Continued from page 35

ment of old equipment and operating


practices of over 10 sets of large-scale ASUs,
Chinese enterprises have successfully
resolved a large number of key technical
equipment design and manufacturing issues. These technologies primarily include
process design to meet needs, equipment
design with specified performance, and
so on. China is now able to independently
manufacture 60,000 Nm3/h ASUs and has
the capabilities to design and manufacture
larger ASU systems up to 120,000 m3/h.
Among these, most static equipment can
be designed and made in China, while
some special devices, such as large-flow
expanders, high pressure cryogenic liquid
pumps and cryogenic valves, generally
have to be imported. From the perspective
of cost, this combination is currently considered to be an optimal solutionnamely,
ensuring that the device is advanced and
reliable with a lower investment and operating cost. Specifically, as the devicesupporting enterprise, Shaangu Power
Company Ltd. has the ability to inde-

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

37

pendently design and manufacture air


compressor units for 120,000 Nm3/h air
separation system after accumulating sufficient research development and technology over the years. It also provides system
solutions and services for units in the air
separation industry.
In general, power consumption approaches 0.38 kW/m3 O2 with the domestic large-scale 60,000 m3/h ASU, which
features long-term safety, reliable and easy
operation and good appearance. Thanks to
technological advances, Chinese air separation firms not only account for more domestic market share, but also show greatly
enhanced international competitiveness.
For example, Sichuan Air Separate Group,
one of the four air separation enterprises
in China, exported a 10,000 Nm3/h ASU
to Turkey; Hangyang exported a 20,000
Nm3/h ASU to Spain; and a 120,000
Nm3/h ASU was exported to Iran in 2014,
which is the largest ASU exported by
China by far.

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Featuring Women in Cryogenics and Superconductivity


Several years ago Cold Facts had a
cover story on women in cryogenics and
superconductivity. It elicited some surprising and interesting responses. We thought it
was time to introduce our readers to several
more women who are excelling in our fields
and find out more about their experiences in
areas where they are still pretty much in the
minority. We sent them several questions
that they could answer. Each answered in
her own unique way.

Questions:
Who were or are your mentors? Are any
of them women? Do you have the same
support and mentoring as men in your
field?
What challenges and/or advantages
have you experienced as a woman working in a STEM field?
Are you assertive in the workplace?
How do your colleagues respondpositive or negative reactions?
Do you see a noticeable difference between how colleagues interact with you
and how they interact with male colleagues?
What advice do you have for women in
STEM careers who are coming up now
and in the future?

Marianne Bossert
Mechanical
Technician,
Fermi National
Accelerator
Laboratory. Performs mechanical assembly
and testing of
superconducting
magnets and
their many components

Ive been very lucky to have excellent


mentors throughout my career. Emanuela
Barzi has always guided me in our research
and has provided endless direction in handling the difficult situations that arise as a
result of being a woman in a STEM field.
Watching the way she has handled these
experiences herself over the years has been
an inspiration to me, and I cant thank her
enough for all she has taught me.
Tom Van Raes has also been an incredible technical mentor. When I started

working at Fermilab, I had research experience, but limited technical experience. Tom
taught me everything he knew, from the
very basic to the complex, and was always
patient when I had questions.
The most striking characteristic Ive noticed in the way my coworkers act toward
me is that they frequently assume Im inexperienced until, and sometimes even after,
they learn otherwise. As a result, coworkers
are eager to help me out when I am new
to a role. The challenge is that they can be
slow to recognize when I have grown and
developed in that role and subsequently
have ideas based on that experience that
could benefit them.
I have oscillated between meekness
and unapologetic self-assuredness, which
has resulted in being overlooked as a contributor and being looked at as pushy, respectively. I would like to think Ive now
settled on a middle ground; Ive learned to
be observant enough to identify work-related problems just as they begin, and put a
stop to them in a firm but unobtrusive way.
I feel that I am expected to constantly
prove my skill as a technician while the
males skills are assumed. The most notable experience illustrating this concept
occurred during a technical discussion between a male technician, two engineers and
me. I was experienced with the topic being
discussed and chimed in with two suggestions. My contributions were overlooked,
but later in the discussion the male technician, who had no experience in these techniques, made the same suggestions and the
engineers listened and incorporated them.
I was amazed at the time, but similar situations continue to occur regularly.
The most constructive reactions to
sexism at work in my case have been first
acknowledging that it occurs, and then
understanding that it is unintentional. The
engineers in the earlier story did not intentionally ignore my commentsthey likely
didnt understand or consider them. Because I understood that the behavior wasnt
malicious, I was able to make changes to my
level of assertiveness that resulted in improvements in the situation. Assuming the
other party is malevolent is the first step to
creating a situation in which both sides are
defensive and nothing will be solved. When
we recognize these problems, the intentions
behind them, and their fallout, we can take

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

38

non-confrontational corrective actions to


ensure our voices are heard.

Haixia Xi
Lead Mechanical
Design EngineerCryogenic, General
Electric Health Care,
MR magnet cryogenic
system design

No special mentor for me, but I can


ask any technical
questions to any of
my colleagues and
they will help me with patience, just as with
their male colleagues. Currently my main
support is from male colleagues, because
there are few women in the cryogenic and
superconductivity field.
Like other female engineers, my main
challenges are maintaining balance between
family and work. However, we do have the
advantage of communicating easily with
colleagues as female engineers.
I just joined the Florence South Carolina team in the past four months and still
am learning a lot of new stuff. When I have
built the capability, I think I will be assertive
in the workplace. At GE, if you maintain a
positive manner, your colleagues will always respond positively.
I dont see a noticeable difference between how colleagues interact with me and
how they interact with male colleagues.
I would advise women in our field to
stay curious: you can find a lot of fun in
STEM!

Beth Evans
Sample Environment Project
Manager and
Chair of the British
Cryogenics Council, ISIS Neutron
Facility, Rutherford
Appleton Laboratory. Evans manages, and provides
design input to,
projects to provide
cryogenic equipment for use on neutron beamlines and other
technological projects for ISIS, but she has
also managed inter-facility sample environ-

www.cryogenicsociety.org

ment projects and the organization of workshops, training schools and public engagement
events.

have experienced less understanding of my


reduced flexibility in terms of travel and
availability.

I have not had an official mentor, although I have been given the opportunity
to manage some very interesting projects by
the ISIS deputy director Zo Bowden, and
through these, and her guidance, I have
learned a great deal.

I am sure many women working in a


STEM field can recall a host of inappropriate comments made by male colleagues,
mostly in jest, and/or the feeling of isolation
when faced with the prospect of being the
only female at a meeting, or even at an entire conference. But this also has the distinct
advantage of becoming instantly memorable to potentially useful contacts. My advice
to women in a STEM career who are coming
up now and in the future is to work hard, be
yourselves and keep your senses of humor.

The greatest challenge I have experienced as a woman working in a STEM field


has been balancing work and home life.
Having a family and changing to part-time
hours in an environment where I was the
first to have done so means that perhaps I

Pascale Dauguet
Scientific Market Manager, Air Liquide
Advanced Technologies (AL-aT). In charge
of marketing and sales of cryoplants (helium
refrigerators and
liquefiers, turboexpanders and
cryogenic compressors, valve boxes and
cryogenic transfer
lines) in Europe and
the Americas, for
scientific labs and
helium gas fields
(helium extraction
units)
(Continued on page 40)

Women, Work Independently and Preeminently on


Cryogenic Engineering
by Dr. Xiaoqin Zhi, associate researcher, University of Wisconsin-Madison, xiaoqin628@126.com

Dr. Xiaoqin Zhi, who graduated from


the cryogenic group Cryoboat of Zhejiang
University in China under the direction of
Professor Dr. Limin Qiu, now works as an
associate researcher at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) with
Professor John M. Pfotenhauer, continuing
her research in the US cryogenic community. In the following year and a half at UWMadison, she will conduct a combination of
modeling and experimental work addressing heat transfer, fluid dynamics and cooling system design for a variety of cryogenic
applications including cryocoolers, air separation and superconducting magnets.
During her doctoral study, Zhi carried out research on the multi-stage Stirling
pulse tube cryocooler (SPTC). Through her
cooperative research at the University of
Giessen with Professor G. Thummes she
was able to achieve minimum temperatures
of 4.26K with He-4 as the working fluid, and
4.03K with He-3 as the working fluid in a
three-stage SPTC. These results represent
a world-record accomplishment for multistage SPTCs, and are inspiring for the various groups working in cryogenics, including
the aerospace corporations who are leading
the development of such coolers. Zhi also
demonstrated a deep understanding of the
detailed thermodynamic cycles occurring
within the pulse tube cryocooler, thereby
illustrating a new working mechanism of
the pulse tube cryocooler from a microscale

perspective. Professor Pfotenhauer commenting on this work remarked, For all of


us exploring the thermodynamics and heat
transfer within these deceptively simplelooking refrigerators, it is a great pleasure
when a colleague unlocks some new understanding of their performance, or surprises
the community with a novel approach that
improves their cooling capacity.
Zhi has recently been selected as the
winner of the Carl von Linde IIR Young
Researchers Award by the committee of International Institute of Refrigeration, for her
outstanding work in cryogenic engineering.
The committee was pleased to recognize
her high quality contributions to the field
of cryogenics, especially as one of the few
female researchers in this area.
Cold and hot are the most basic feelings in nature, which makes the cryocooler
and heat transfer study very intuitive and
vivid to me. I am not just choosing cryogenics as a career; I do love it. Besides, cryogenic technology is an essential supporting
technology in many areas, and I feel a great
sense of accomplishment when doing my
research well, said Zhi. There are some
difficulties for women to work in an engineering field like cryogenics, but I believe
that my feminine characteristics of carefulness, meticulousness, patience and even
assertiveness help me to do my research
well. Furthermore, an increasing number of

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

39

opportunities are being provided to help


women advance their careers within the
worldwide cryogenic community, and it is
becoming easier for women to study and
work in cryogenic engineering. As in my
own case, it has been very helpful and enjoyable to work with leading experts worldwide from Hangzhou, to Giessen, and to
UW-Madison. I feel women are welcomed
in the field of cryogenic engineering. We
receive the same support from our coworkers and mentors as do our male colleagues.
Sometimes, we are even more likely to win
recognition and admiration when doing a
good job, especially in China. So, I encourage females who are interested in this field
to confidently jump in and believe you can
do it well through hard work.
Women can work independently in
the field of engineering. They can work as
well as, or sometimes better than, men. ...We
hope more talented women will choose to
work on cryogenics to make this field more
lively.

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Women in Cryogenics...

Continued from page 39

My mentors were Louis Burnod


(CERN), Jacques Chaussy (CNRS) and
Guy Gistau (AL-aT). None of them were
women. I have benefitted from the same
level of support and mentoring as men in
my field. Twenty years ago, beyond your
diplomas, references and professional position, half the time during the first meeting with a new interlocutor, as a woman
you had to strongly demonstrate that you
were the relevant person for the job. I was
more challenged than my male colleagues.
But after demonstration of your abilities,
the fact that you were a woman turned
out to be an advantage, with the negative
a-prori turning to positive respect, even
admiration, especially in countries were the
employment rate of women was low.

measuring, the sample test, the post-processing


and the analysis of data.

difference in treatment between me and my


male colleagues.

My mentors are Professor Yifeng Yang,


Dr. Edward A. Young and Professor Carlo
Beduz. My research group (including professors, lecturers, research fellows, PhD
students and technicians) is composed of
10 people and only two of us are women.
I have been working in this research group
for four years now and I consider my working experience very positive. The people in
my working environment are very openminded and as a consequence I have never
felt any kind of difference in treatment between me and my male colleagues.

I think that dedication and enthusiasm


for the work are the keys to being respected
and treated as a professional in any work
environment. Feeling such a respect from
others is essential to gain self-confidence
and makes it easier not only to express
yourself in work discussions but also to
build more personal relationships with your
colleagues. Also, as a woman in science, I
have never tried to hide my feminine side
and I do not think that hiding it or following any stereotype would help a woman to
be given more consideration; my personal
objective is to keep on growing professionally and humanly, showing who I really am.

I feel that this special treatment is


less the case today. Nowadays the behavior of professional interlocutors in STEM is
more neutral regarding the sex of the professional they are working with, which is
a good improvement, certainly due to the
increased number of women in STEM fields
in the last two decades. I do not see a noticeable difference between how colleagues
interact with me and how they interact with
male colleagues.

Young women
coming up in the
field should never
fear or have any
doubts about
working with men.

I would advise younger women to consider that a STEM career is nowadays fully
compatible with a balanced family life and
with childrens education, for both men and
women. The job can be shared. And this is
a good example for your girls to follow. Be
confident, demonstrate your talents to others, express your professional expectations
and ask for promotion.

Iole Falorio
Research
Fellow,
University of
Southampton,
Characterization of HTS
superconductors in critical
conditions,
in a wide
range of
temperatures
and fields.
Falorios job
includes the
design of the
sample holder
required for
the specific measurements, the manufacturing
of the mechanical components required for

The main challenge Ive had to face


when I started working in superconductivity and cryogenics was to work in a mechanical laboratory, which requires very strong
practical skills. Although my parents certainly did their best for my education, I was
never encouraged or involved during my
childhood in solving practical problemsit
was done instead with my brother, since
this was considered to be more a mans
job. Also, my background at university was
more theoretical than practical; therefore,
I felt very unconfident when I first started
to face experiment setup problems and the
need to design, manufacture and assemble
mechanical components. Curiosity and observation have been, and still are, my tactics
for stepping forward and overcoming these
limitations.
Communication is very important in
my research group and all opinions are
welcome for discussion among the team. So
in general terms my colleagues respond in a
positive way and I dont see any noticeable

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

40

Agnieszka Piotrowska
Doctor Engineer, Wroclaw
(Poland)
University of
Technology

My choice
of technical
studies was
not a coincidence. Problems requiring
a mathematical
background and logical explanation were
always much easier to understand and
solve for me than learning by heart. At the
beginning I wanted to focus on refrigeration technologies, but after the first lecture
on cryogenics I was sure about my future
profession. Therefore, I decided to continue
my education as a doctoral student in cryogenics technologies at Wroclaw University of Technology. My PhD studies were
dedicated to thermodynamic optimization
analysis of an autonomous system for liquid
nitrogen production in small quantities. The
concept was based on coupling N2 separation technology (polymer membrane) with
a Joule-Thomson cryogenic cooler.
Currently I hold the position of assistant
professor in the Department of Cryogenics,
Aeronautical and Process Engineering at
Wroclaw University of Technology. Im a
lecturer and supervisor of both engineers
and masters theses and cryogenic technologies projects. Three years ago I joined the
teaching staff of English-language Master
Studies in Refrigeration and Cryogenics.

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Besides my duties as an academic


teacher, Im involved with the Strategic Program Advanced Technologies for Energy
Generation: oxy-combustion technology for
PC and FBC boilers with CO2 capture supported by the National Center for Research
and Development. As a project engineer Im
involved in the development of medium capacity cryogenic coolers. My research program is focused on Joule-Thomson coolers
working in a closed system and supplied
with gas mixtures. Im also interested in risk
analysis of cryogenic systems. My interest
in quantitative risk assessment methodology is influenced by the fact that cryogenic
industrial installations and scientific facilities become more and more complex and
require an increasing amount of cryogens.
This trend has to be followed by solutions
repairing the results of potential failures.
Therefore, methods for identifying hazards
and for classifying failure consequences
must be evolved now.

distribution line for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). I spent five months at CERN
working in the cryogenic group (technology department). I was also involved in the
collaboration between CERN and Wroclaw
University of Technology. I took part in the
update of the Preliminary Risk Analysis of
the LHC cryogenic system and the analysis
of helium release from the helium ring line.
Im also a co-organizer and lecturer at the
European Course of Cryogenics (reported
in Cold Facts each year).

ognized in the work environment from the


very beginning.

Public presentation is a challenge.


In general, public presentations are very
stressful situations. From my experience,
explaining a technical problem and its solution to 200 or 300 men makes me double- or
even square-stressed. On one hand I must
be aware that even a small mistake will be
noticed, but at the same time its the best
motivation to pay special attention to each
possible detail.

I acquired industrial experience during


internships at CERN and KrioSystem (Wroclaw, Poland). I had the chance to participate in the reception tests of the cryogenic

There is a bright side to being a woman


working in a mans world. In a group full
of men, a woman always is noticed and
remembered. This results in our being rec-

Young women coming up in the field


should never fear or have any doubts about
working with men. Although technical
studies are not easy, they are definitely most
interesting and give us the opportunity to
use our imagination and creativity. The
start-up of a system that was just a drawing
at first or the opportunity to participate in
big projects gives lots of satisfaction. If I had
to make the choice again, I would choose
Technical University once more. Moreover, Im sure that the taste of success for a
woman working in a predominantly maledominated profession is much sweeter.

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

41

I am assertive in the workplace, because


my time is very precious to me. The secret
is to do it in a polite but firm (strict) way.
My colleagues were surprised, but they got
used to it very fast. Ive never had to face
any negative reaction from them. Maybe
Im lucky, but I dont see much difference
in how my colleagues interact with me and
with my male colleagues.

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Product Showcase
In the interest of enhancing the value of Cold Facts and helping prospective customers find cryogenic products and services, weve added
this new Product Showcase to the magazine for all issues of 2015. We invite companies to send us short releases (250 words or fewer) with
high resolution JPEGs of their new products.

Atlas Technologies

Advanced Research Systems

Robust bimetallic transition couplings

High cooling power cryocoolers

Standard sized Al to SS bimetal transitions allow


aluminum tube or pipe to be welded directly to SS tube
or pipe. Used in thousands of cryogenic, ultrahigh
vacuum, and industrial applications for decades.

Advanced Research Systems, Inc. (CSA


CSM), has added three new models to its product line of high cooling power, closed-cycle
cryocoolers for 4K environments. These pneumatically driven Gifford-McMahon (GM) type
cryocoolers are lighter in weight compared to
mechanical drive GM cryocoolers. They also
feature smallest-in-class power consumption (<
7 kW) during steady-state operation.

Transition couplings handle cryogenic temperature cycling and resulting mechanical deformations.
At cryogenic LN2 and liquid He temperatures, the
Coefficient of Thermal Expansion between interlayers SS (9.4), Cu (9.8), Ti (5.5) Al (13.2) and Al (13.2)
acts as dampening spring, giving cryogenic components a robust resilience for repeated cycling of the
bond to temperatures to 196C and lower.
Interlayers are also very robust chemically, and
proper welding procedures keep the layers insulated
from intermetallic chemical reactions occurring during weld-up. The materials are rated at 300C.
Because the interlayers between the primary
metals, stainless steel and aluminum, are very thin
Cu (0.03", 0.76mm), Ti (0.012", 0.3mm), Al (0.04",
1.0mm) the strength of the interface is greater than
the strength of constituent metals. Average shear
strength of this interface has been tested to 11,000
PSI. The bonds will withstand an internal pressure
of well beyond 10 Bar.
The all-welded bimetallic joints enable cryogen,
liquid or gas supply lines to transition from one metal
to another: liquid nitrogen, hydrogen, helium and
many other industrial gases and liquids. After TIG,
MIG, or electron beam welding to standard tube or
pipe, they provide a fully hermetic solution.

These new cryocoolers offer a wide range


of benefits. An axial symmetric design limits offaxis vibration, making these cryocoolers ideal
for applications and environments that require
ultralow vibrations, such as medical imaging
and nanoscale science. These cold heads can be
oriented tip-up, tip-down or horizontally, so you
have more options when fitting them into tight
spaces. Maintenance procedures on pneumatically driven cold heads like these are simple and
easy to follow. That means you can spend less time on maintenance and
more time running your applications.
Advanced Research Systems customers have already put these enhanced, high power cryocoolers to work in low temperature laboratory
experimentation, hard-drive manufacturing and testing, cryogen-free
cooling of superconducting magnets and other applications. These cold
heads are especially well suited for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
When combined with one of the companys universal flange configurations, they can easily be used as a drop-in replacement in an existing MRI
system. www.arscryo.com

Gerhart

All Atlas bonded material is helium leak-checked


to better than 1 x 10-9 Std. Torr He Lt/sec. www.
atlasuhv.com

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

SafeHose-PT
The SafeHose-PT prevents accidental opening of an automatic
valve. A special sensor detects
whether the hose is pressurized.
The actual pressure and status of
switch (open or closed) is indicated
on the SafeHose-PT. It works with
AC or DC valves and includes a
piping kit to tie into most existing
filling systems. The SafeHose-PT is
for cryogenic liquid or high pressure gas (up to 6000 psig) applications. www.gerhart.com

42

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Fabrum Solutions
PT330W cryocoolers
Fabrum Solutions in conjunction
with Callaghan Innovation have had
exceptional results with their commercially available 330W cryocoolers.
The cryocoolers have been in laboratory tests since mid-2014, and in recent
commercial applications are replicating
the laboratory results. The PT330W is
developing up to 415W at 77K, but in
commercial format it is delivering 350W
at 77K. The cryocooler uses the patented
pressure wave generator (PWG) and an inline pulse tube.
The cryocoolers
are ideally suited to
industrial and commercial applications
due to the benefits of
the PWG. The rugged
industrial motor is
cost effective, robust
and reliable, tolerant
of poor power quality,
flexible for multiple
voltages and simple

to use. It also has a long life and lasts


40,000 hours between major overhauls.
The long-life metal diaphragms
keep oil separate from the clean gas
circuit. With no moving seals and the
diaphragms acting as the flexure bearings, ultimate reliability and long life
is ensured. The opposing diaphragm
gas spring balances average pressure
and provides a convenient reservoir for
pulse tubes. A simple drive mechanism
utilizes conventional lubrication operating at atmospheric pressure requiring
no pressure control. It
is easily accessible for
preventative maintenance (oil changes)
without disturbing the
clean gas circuit.
The same technology is employed in the
PT1000W cryocooler
that is in final endurance testing now, with
early performance
indications of 1.2kw
at 77K. www.fabrum.
co.nz

Advanced Piping
Products

The pipe shoe consists of a monolithic unit molded from continuous


strand glass mat in a hybrid thermosetting resin around a core of foam insulation. The pipe shoe boasts a compressive
strength of 27,500 psi. In addition to its
high strength, the composite material
has a low thermal conductivity that

attoDRY800 cryo-optical
table
Quantum optics experiments often
require cryogenic temperatures combined
with optical access. Most experimental
setups contain numerous optical elements
delicately arranged on an optical table to
shape and prepare the incident light, as
well as to efficiently collect and convert
the emitted light from the sample. The
available space on the optical table is in
such cases paramount to many complex
setups.
The attoDRY800 consists of an ultralow vibration cold breadboard platform extensively integrated into an optical
table, making use of the space underneath
it. This unique design ensures unobstructed optical access to the cold sample
from all directions on the optical table via
one top and four side optical windows.
Apochromatic objectives with high numerical aperture (NA=0.81-0.95) can either
be integrated into the cryostat, into the
vacuum shroud, or put in close working
distance next to the optical windows from
the outside. This ensures extremely low
drifts and optimal collection efficiency.
The closed-cycle attoDRY800 requires
no liquid cryogens, thus minimizing running costs. In addition, a fully automated
temperature control between 4 and 350K
conveniently enables unattended long
measurement cycles.

CryoTek pipe shoe


Advanced Piping Products (CSA
CSM) CryoTek pipe shoe is a cutting
edge, non-metallic pipe support solution for extreme temperature conditions.
It is ideal for cryogenic piping systems
that involve gas liquefaction, LNG terminals/carriers, ethylene plants or any
cryogenic process piping. Although the
CryoTek pipe shoe was originally developed for use in cryogenic conditions, it
also offers unparalleled performance in
temperatures up to 400F and is the premier solution for cryogenic or elevated
piping systems.

attocube

prevents heat sinks and fluctuations in


pipe system temperatures. The resin is
corrosion and UV resistant and, upon
request, can be combined with an intumescent coating to resist temperatures
up to 2,000F, for up to two hours.
The CryoTek pipe shoe also offers
many installation benefits. Installation
takes a fraction of the time that it takes
to install traditional pre-insulated metallic supports. Because it is lightweight,
it can be installed without the use of
heavy-lift equipment. This product reliably succeeds in harsh applications
where other pipe shoes fail, making it
an exceptional pipe support for extreme
temperature conditions. www.appinc.co

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

43

While many off-the-shelf closedcycle cryostats suffer from severe vibrations at the sample location, special care
was taken during the development of the
attoDRY800 to keep the displacements to
a maximum of 1 nm (RMS) by a special
patented vibration isolation technology.
Hence, even extremely sensitive measurements are possible. The attoDRY800s cold
breadboard sample space can host several
of attocubes patented nanopositioners, as
well as complete microscope or photonic
probe station solutions. www.attocube.com

www.cryogenicsociety.org

YouTube Campaign Supports #mylinearcollider


Lauren Biron in symmetry magazine
reports that scientists are joining together
in an online video campaign aimed at encouraging Japan to host the worlds next
big particle accelerator, the proposed International Linear Collider (ILC).
The ILC plans to further study the
Higgs boson and other aspects of particle
physics. Its construction will likely take the
better part of a decade, potentially cost billions of dollars and require a high level of
commitment and planning by the host nation. Asian, European and US plans for the
future of particle physics all include some
level of participation in a future linear collider.
Japan is the top candidate for siting
the ILC. The Japanese high energy physics
community has recommended the ILC be
built on a site in the Kitakami mountains of
the Iwate and Miyagi prefectures. A panel
set up by Japans Ministry of Education,
Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) is
presently reviewing the proposed hosting
of the ILC in Japan.
Demonstrating their support for the
ILC, scientists from around the world are
posting to YouTube as part of the #mylinearcollider video campaign.
I think it helps politicians and bureaucrats and some of the people who
dont have a scientific background understand that there is a lot of community
support behind this, says Katie Malone,
an ATLAS researcher at SLAC laboratory
who participated. Were really excited
about it, and its worth the investment that
they are considering.
More than 620 videos by scientists
worldwide have been uploaded to YouTube with the #mylinearcollider hashtag
since the campaign started in October
2014. Supporters filmed their responses
from various locationslab control rooms,
poster sessions, lush gardens and busy
Top to bottom: Nigel Lockyer, director
of Fermilab; Heather Logan, a physicist
at Carleton University, Canada; Mattia
Checchin, a PhD student at the Illinois
Institute of Technology, studying at
Fermilab; Maria Krawczyk, a physicist
at University of Warsaw, Poland; Robert
Kieffer, CERN, Switzerland; and Nodaka
Yamanaka, a physicist at RIKEN, Japan.
Images: ILCcommunication on YouTube.

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

44

streets. Students, postdocs, fellows and


professors all are shown in support of ILC.
The 19-mile linear collider would
smash electrons into positrons at an energy
of 500 billion electronvolts, in contrast to
the 17-mile circular Large Hadron Collider
at CERN, which will soon collide protons
at an energy of 13 trillion electronvolts.
Using elementary particles, the ILC would
produce simpler, cleaner collisions and
allow scientists to study the Higgs and
other phenomena with increased precision.
MEXT is expected to report on ILC by
March 2016, according to ILC communicator Rika Takahashi. But the YouTube campaign, which she calls a visual petition,
wont necessarily end with approval of the
project.
We also need to reach industry and
the local people who are in the area where
the ILC might be built, Takahashi says.
This facility will be for the younger generation. Many of us will be retired when the
ILC starts running, so we need to reach out
to the younger students and researchers.
Many videos have come from Japanese scientists as well as from scientists
affiliated with CERN or with institutions
in Germany, the United States, Italy and
India. Scientists have also posted support
from Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, Mexico,
Slovenia and Serbiatruly across the
globe.
Videos usually are short testimonials citing why the supporter would like
the ILC to be built and what they hope it
will accomplish. Some are simple images
of the scientist with the words I want the
ILC; others are more complex. More than
a dozen scientists at the Instituto de Fsica
Corpuscular in Valencia, Spain, present a
tour of their campus while they explain
why they want the new collider. And
one supportive professor plays an ILC
song on the guitar, accompanied by a grad
student.

For more videos, visit


https://www.youtube.com/
user/ILCcommunication, or
search for #mylinearcollider
on YouTube.

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Cryo-Oops...

Continued from page 33

When you specify how to clean


your system, take some time to determine what level of cleanliness you need.
That is, for example, think about what
level of particulates you can tolerate, or
how pure your cryogenic fluid needs
to be. You need to make your system
clean enough, but specify a cleanliness
level consistent with your requirements.
Dont put in a five micron filter if a 100
micron filter is sufficient for your purposes.
Secondly, keep it clean. Install filters in appropriate places to prevent
particles from migrating through your
system. When commissioning a new
system, check these filters oftenno
matter how careful you are when fabricating a system, a few surprises could
still show up in these filters after you
start up. Bits of Teflon tape, welders
wire brushes, rocks, etc. may show up.

Monitor these filters regularly and service when appropriate.


Besides monitoring the pressure
drop across filters, if required, install gas
analyzers to monitor the purity of your
fluid. Impurities are good indicators of
leaks into your system.
Another aspect of monitoring is just
watching and listening. If some equipment sounds noisier than usual, or
seems to be vibrating a lot, that could
mean something has shaken loose and
is rattling around in your system.
Finally, probably the most effective way to prevent contamination is
to practice good housekeeping. Cap off
open connections. Keep the environment clear of dust and dirt that can find
its way into your system. Keep good records on maintenance items like filters.
Inspect gaskets and replace them if they

look worn. It might not be extremely sophisticated, but good housekeeping and
vigilance are probably your best protection against contamination.

In summary
If you are careful to (1) determine
how clean your system needs to be, (2)
understand where contaminants can
come from, (3) design your system to
minimize the possibility of contamination and (4) practice good housekeeping, you should be able to avoid getting
that phone call in the middle of the night
telling you the system is down, and you
need to get out of your warm bed to fix
it.
As always, we invite you to share
any of your oops stories with us. Feel
free to send them in to Kelsey Beachum at
kelsey@cryogenicsociety.org, and well
try to include them in this column.

Register Now for CSAs

Short Courses
at CEC/ICMC
Sunday, June 28, 2015, at the Marriott
Starr Pass Resort in Tucson, Arizona

Dr. Ray Radebaugh

Dr. Ron Ross

Dr. Rong-Li Geng

Cryocooler Fundamentals and


Space Applications

Pricing

8:00 am-5:00 pm

Half-Day Course

by Drs. Ray Radebaugh, ret. NIST


Boulder, and Ron Ross, ret. Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Superconducting Radio
Frequency Systems
8:00 am-12:00 pm

by Dr. Rong-Li Geng, Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility


Deadline for early registration is May 15.
For instructor bios, online registration and
more information about the courses, visit

http://2csa.us/sc15.
Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

Dr. Scott Courts

Practical Thermometry and


Instrumentation
1:00 pm-5:00 pm

by Dr. Scott Courts, Lake Shore


Cryotronics

46

Early:
Regular:
Student:

$225
$250
$125

Full-Day Course
Early:
Regular:
Student:

$380
$415
$200

Both Half-Day Courses


Early:
Regular:
Student:

$390
$425
$210

www.cryogenicsociety.org

People, Companies in Cryogenics


Scientists
will celebrate
the 20th anniversary of
the top quark
discovery
at Fermilab
(CSA CSM) at
a workshop to be held from April 9-10.
Fermilab announced the discovery of the
top quark, the heaviest subatomic particle ever observed, in 1995.

We regret to report the death on


March 16 of CSA Fellow Dr. Thomas M.
Flynn. Flynn died in his sleep at home
where he was in hospice care. CSA invites colleagues to submit tributes to
be published in Cold Facts Volume 31
Number 3. Send your comments to laurie@cryogenicsociety.org by April 17.
The Sponsoring Consortium for
Open Access Publishing in Particle
Physics (SCOAP3) started its second
year of operation and celebrates the publication of the first 5,000 articles. More

than 18,000 scientists from 86 countries


have benefited from this Open Access
initiative, publishing articles at no direct
costs.
On Sunday, April 5, the worlds
most powerful particle accelerator
began its second act. After two years
of upgrades and repairs, proton beams
once again circulated around the Large
Hadron Collider (LHC), located at the
CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.
With the collider back in action,
the more than 1,700 US scientists who
work on LHC experiments are prepared
to join thousands of their international
colleagues to study the highest-energy
particle collisions ever achieved in the
laboratory. These collisionshundreds
of millions of them every secondwill
(Continued on page 48)

S AV E

T H E

2015

DAT E

HEPTech, together with CNRS,


CEA, Grenoble University, Lanef and
ILL, in close partnership with CERN,
the University of Twente and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, is organizing a cryogenics event bringing together
academia and industry, to be held in
Grenoble at the CCI (Chambre de Commerce et dIndustrie de Grenoble), June
4-5. The group states, Cryogenics has

widely contributed to the recent major


successes of high energy physics (HEP).
And conversely, HEP has pushed cryogenic engineering developments to a
high level of technical excellence. HEPTech is a pan-European HEP network
created by initiative of CERN with 22
members in 17 countries.

June 28 - July 2 2015

J W M a r r i o t t S t a r r Pa s s R e s o r t T u c s o n , A r i z o n a
Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

47

www.cryogenicsociety.org

In March, Fermilab (CSA CSM)


Deputy Director and Chief Research
Officer Dr. David Lykken announced
the launch labs Womens Initiative, a
program that will sponsor events aimed
at educating all employees about the
ways in which women affect the workplace and the importance of promoting
gender equality. The kickoff featured
writer Hannah Bloch discussing global
womens issues.

NASAs Glenn Research Center in


Cleveland is celebrating the launch of
the Hubble Space Telescope 25 years
ago this April with a series of activities
for children and adults to learn more
about Hubbles amazing contributions
over the last quarter century. The celebration kicked off on April 1 with a
Hubble@25 awards ceremony honoring
Glenns Hubble Space Telescope team
who contributed to its mission, featuring
remarks by Center Director Jim Free and
Aerospace Engineer Bruce Banks, who

Tank Level Instruments

Visual Level Indicators

Lykken said, We hope and expect


the series of events, which highlights a
variety of perspectives, to cause some
reflection and generate conversation

and action that has a positive impact on


the culture of our laboratory. Although
organized by women, it is critical that
men are part of the conversation. He
also noted that March, Womens History
Month, was a good time to reflect on
the outstanding achievements of women
in science, overcoming not just the usual
challenges of deciphering the universe
but also a professional landscape littered
with gender-based obstacles.

Stainless Steel Valves

lead scientists to new and unexplored


realms of physics and could yield extraordinary insights into the nature of
the physical universe. During the LHCs
second run, particles will collide at a
staggering 13 teraelectronvolts, which
is 60 percent higher than any accelerator
has achiveved before.

Continued from page 47

Cryogenic Components

People, Companies...

served as chief of the Electro-Physics


Branch and managed Glenns Hubble
team.
Ann Carroll
has been promoted
to Sales Support,
Marketing & Logistics Group Supervisor at Janis
Research Company (CSA CSM).
She will supervise
support staff for sales engineers and
logistics/shipping and will continue to
handle marketing for the company.
CSA member George Zimmerman at
Boston University has brought to our attention the passing of several colleagues
who worked in low temperatures. We
are sorry to report this loss. They are
Robert Meservey, who retired from MIT
in the last two years; Myron Strongin,
who passed away last fall and whose

WEKA AG Switzerland
Schrlistrasse 8 CH-8344 Bretswil
Phone +41 43 833 43 43
Fax +41 43 833 43 49
info@weka-ag.ch www.weka-ag.ch

ARCA Flow Group worldwide:


Competence in valves, pumps & cryogenics

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

48

www.cryogenicsociety.org

memorial was held on January 31, 2015,


at Brookhaven National Laboratory; and
James Brooks, who last worked at the
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee FL and was a professor at Florida State University.
The High Energy Particle Physics
Group at the University of Notre Dame
is hosting a public video contest called
Rock the LHC, from March 23 to May
31. Participants are invited to create
short videos about why they are interested in the research at the Large Hadron
Collider (LHC). The goal of the video
contest is to celebrate particle physics
and the US contributions to the LHC.
http://2csa.us/d8
Daniel Dender is now acquisition
specialist and contracting officer representative at NISTs Material Measurement Laboratory.

The new Stargazer Lottie doll, set to


be released in March, was designed in
collaboration with the European Space
Agency and a working astrophysicist.
She has her own telescope, solar system
trading cards and profiles of famous female astronomers. Credit: Tariq Malik/
www.space.com

science joke hes heard: A Higgs boson


walks into a church, and the priest says,
Im sorry we dont allow Higgs bosons
to come to churches. And [the Higgs]
says, But without me, you cant have
mass. DeGrasse Tyson says he first
heard this joke told by science comedian
Brian Malow.

Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson


is quoted by Jessica Orwig in business
insider.com as saying this is the funniest

CORRECTION: We regret that the


Technology Focus in Cold Facts Vol. 31
No. 1 misspelled the name of the featured company. It should be Iris Technology. The company has developed the
Iris Cryocooler Electronics (ICE) product
line, a suite of plug-and-play cryocooler control electronics designed to
support both traditional life-long space
and tactical cryocoolers with applicability spanning from microsats to deep
space astronomy. www.iristechnology.
com

Upcoming Meetings & Events


International Particle Accelerator
Conference (IPAC15)
May 3-8
Richmond, VA
http://2csa.us/cw

World Gas Conference


June 1-5
Paris, France
http://2csa.us/br

Joint Army-Navy-NASA-Air Force


(JANNAF) Meeting

CSA Short Courses at CEC/ICMC


June 28
JW Marriott Starr Pass Resort, Tucson AZ
http://2csa.us/sc15

Cryogenic Engineering Conference/


International Cryogenic Materials
Conference (CEC/ICMC)
June 28-July 2
JW Marriott Starr Pass Resort, Tucson AZ
www.cec-icmc.org

International Conference on Magnet


Technology (MT 24)
October 18-23
Coex, Seoul, Korea
http://2csa.us/c8

CGA Safety & Reliability of Industrial


Gases, Equipment and Facilities Seminar
October 20-21
Intercontinental Hotel, Tampa FL

16th International Workshop on Low


Temperature Detectors

The 18th International Conference of


the International Society of Cryosurgery
(Cryo Egypt 2015)

HEPTech Academia Meets Industry on


Cryogenics

July 20-24
Centre de Congrs WTC, Grenoble, France
http://2csa.us/cg

October 21-24
Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt
http://2csa.us/ck

June 4-5
Grenoble, France
http://2csa.us/d7

24th IIR International Congress of


Refrigeration

Gastech 2015

26th Space Cryogenics Workshop


(SCW'15)

August 16-22
Yokohama, Japan
http://2csa.us/c4

June 1-5
Nashville, TN
http://2csa.us/cm

June 24-26
Embassy Suites-Biltmore, Phoenix AZ
www.spacecryogenicsworkshop.org

CSA Tours at SCW15


June 27
JW Marriott Starr Pass Resort, Tucson AZ
http://2csa.us/tours

17th International Conference on RF


Superconductivity
September 13-18
Whistler Conference Centre, Whistler, British
Columbia, Canada

October 27-30
Singapore
http://2csa.us/bu

2016
Particle Accelerator Conference (PAC16)
October 10-14
Sheraton Towers, Chicago IL

www.cryogenicsociety.org/calendar

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

49

www.cryogenicsociety.org

Index of Advertisers
Take a moment to join CSA
today and receive your own
copy of Cold Facts.

26th Space Cryogenics Workshop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24


ACME Cryogenics, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Advanced Research Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
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Rates: circle $ amount

Bauer Compressors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Individual: $75

CAD Cut/Web Industries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11


CCH Equipment Co. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Corporate, number of employees:


1-10, $450 11-25, $660 26-50, $870 51-100, $1,290
101-500, $2,340 501-1,000, $5,250 1,000+, $7,000

Chart Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Government/Non-profit, $450.

Cryo Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inside Front Cover

ALL foreign add $40, remit in US $ on US bank. No bank transfers.

Cryoco LLC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Special Lifetime membership: US, $600; outside US, $750.

Cryofab, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inside Back Cover

Student or retiree: $35

Charge your membership

Cryogenic Control Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

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Cryogenic Machinery Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31


Cryomech, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Back Cover

Account number

CEC/ICMC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Signature

CSA Short Courses at CEC/ICMC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Expiration

Security code

Please print

CSA Tours at SCW15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13


HPD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Name

Title

International Cryogenics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Janis Research Co., Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Company

Lake Shore Cryotronics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Address

Linde Cryogenics/Linde Process Plants, Inc. . . Inside Back Cover


City

State/Country

Master Bond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Email

Website

Meyer Tool & Mfg., Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Phone

Fax

Magnatrol Valve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Oxford Instruments Omicron NanoScience . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Zip + 4

What is your involvement in cryogenics?

PHPK Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inside Front Cover


Send to:

RegO Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

New Memberships Cryogenic Society of America


218 Lake Street Oak Park IL 60302-2609
Fax: 708-383-9337

RICOR USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
SGD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Sumitomo SHI Cryo America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Join CSA online!


http://2csa.us/join

Sunpower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
SuperPower Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Technifab. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Cold Facts is the official technical magazine of The Cryogenic Society


of America, Inc. 218 Lake Street Oak Park IL 60302-2609
Phone: 708-383-6220 Ext. 302 Fax: 708.383.9337
Email: csa@cryogenicsociety.org Web: www.cryogenicsociety.org
A non-profit technical society serving all those interested in any phase
of cryogenics
SSN 1085-5262 CSA-C- 3840 April 2015
Printed in USA

Tempshield Cryo-Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Thermax, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
WEKA AG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Cold Facts | April 2015 | Volume 31 Number 2

50

www.cryogenicsociety.org

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