Advancing Temperature Instrumentation ............. 8 Nanoparticles Key to Tissue Preservation ............

34
Pulsating Heat Pipes for Future Space Flight..... 26 Pulverizing E-waste Is Green and Clean............... 38
The Coolest Spot in the Universe ....................... 32 CSA Short Courses at CEC-ICMC 2017 ............ 40

GOES-16 Sends First Images | 28

Volume 33 Number 2
Join Our Growing Family of CSA Get connected to the cryogenic community
worldwide. Let your voice be heard and
Corporate Sustaining Members your contributions known.

Abbess Instruments and Systems, Inc. Cryogenic Control Systems, Inc. Instant Systems, Inc. PHPK Technologies

Ability Engineering Technology, Inc. Cryogenic Industries, Inc. International Cryogenics, Inc. Precision Measurements and
Instruments Corp.
Acme Cryogenics, Inc. Cryogenic Institute of New England ISOFLEX USA Prentex Alloy Fabricators, Inc.

Advanced Research Systems, Inc. Cryogenic Limited

Janis Research Company LLC Quantum Cryogenics Ltd.

Aerospace Fabrication & Materials Cryogenic Machinery Corporation Quantum Design, Inc.
Kadel Engineering Corp.
Air Liquide advanced Technologies Cryoguard Corporation Ratermann Cryogenics
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Cryomagnetics, Inc. Ratermann Manufacturing, Inc.
American Magnetics, Inc.
Kelvin International Corporation
Cryomech, Inc. Re-Vac Inc.
Amuneal Manufacturing Corp.
Kelvin Technology, Inc. Redstone Aerospace
Cryonova, LLC
Argonne National Laboratory
CryoSRV, LLC KEYCOM Corporation RegO Products
Barber-Nichols Inc.
Cryotherm GmbH & Co. KG L-3 Cincinnati Electronics RUAG Space GmbH
BellowsTech, LLC
CryoVac GmbH Sauer Compressors USA
Lake Shore Cryotronics, Inc.
Brooks Automation, Inc., Vacuum
Scientific Instruments, Inc.
Products Division CryoWorks, Inc.
Linde Cryogenics, Division of Linde
Engineering North America Inc. SGD Inc.
CAD Cut, Inc. Cryoworld BV
Shell-N-Tube
Sh
Shell
ll-N
N-Tube Pvt.
T ube Pv
P t. Ltd.
CAEN Technologies Demaco Holland BV Lydall Per
Performance
formance Materials
erfo
shirokuma
shirok
hirokuma GmbH
uma Gm
mbH
CCH Equipment Com
mpany
Company DH Industries BV Magnatrol
Magnatr l Valve Corporation
atro
Sierra Lobo, In
Inc.
c
Chart Inc. DH Industries India Pvt. Ltd.
Magnus
nus Precision
Magn Pre
reci sion Manufacturing, Inc.
cisi Inc.
c. Composites
Spaulding Comp
mposites Inc.
DH Industries USA, Inc.
Cryo
yola
labb
Circor CryogenicsCPC Cryolab Marathon
Marath Products,
hon P rodu
ro ctss, Inc.
duct Inc
nc. Cryogenics
SPS C ryogenics BV
CryoSystems,
ms, Inc.
DMP CryoSystem Inc.
Clark Industries, Inc. STAR Cryoelectronics
Master
Ma
Mast
s er Bond
Eden Cryogenics
Coax Co., Ltd. Sthr Armaturen GmbH & Co. KG
Meyer
y r Tool & Mfg., Inc.
Meye
Corporation
EPSIM Corpor
oraation
Composite Technology Sumitomo (SHI) Cryogenics of
Development, Inc. MMR Technologies,
MMR Technologies, Inc. America, Inc.
Industries
Essex Indust
tri
ries
e
Sunpower, Inc.
Cool Pair Plus Facility for Rare Isotope Beams Molecular Products, Inc.
Michigan State University SuperPower, Inc.
Creare LLC NASA Kennedy Cryogenics
Fermi National Accelerator Technifab Products, Inc.
Laboratory Test Laboratory
Criotec Impianti srl
Temati
Fin Tube Products, Inc. National Cryogenics Corporation
Cryo Industries of America
Tempshield Cryo-Protection
Cryo Technologies Gardner Cryogenics National High Magnetic Field
Laboratory Thermal Space
HPD
Cryoco LLC Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator
High Tech Services Nexans Deutschland GmbH Facility
Cryocomp
Hypres Inc. Niowave, Inc. TRIUMF
Cryoconnect, Div. of Tekdata
Interconnections Ltd. TS Italia SRL
Independence Cryogenic Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Engineering, LLC
Valcor Scientific
Cryofab, Inc.
Oxford Instruments NanoScience
Indium Corporation WEKA AG
Cryogas Tech Sdn. Bhd.
 Inside This Issue

8 22 30 32
FEATURES COLUMNS
8 Advancing Cryogenic Temperature Instrumentation 6 Executive Directors Letter

34 Nanoparticles Key to Tissue Preservation 20 Defining Cryogenics

36 Boundary-Layer Detection in a Cryogenic Wind 22 Space Cryogenics

Tunnel Using Temperature-Sensitive Paint Coupled
with a Carbon Nanotube Heating Layer 25 Cryo-Oops

38 Pulverizing E-waste Is Green and Clean SPOTLIGHTS

39 In Memoriam David Hawksworth
12 Spauldings Journey from Leatherboard to Fusion
40 CSA Short Courses at CEC-ICMC 2017
14 Tempshield Strengthens Its Grip

16 Oxford Probes Nanostructure Experiment

SCW 2017 SPECIAL SECTION
19 EPSIM Designs Indoor LOX Plant Test Facility
26 Pulsating Heat Pipes Hold Promise for Future Space for US Navy
Flight
42 PRODUCT SHOWCASE
28 GOES-16 Transmits First Images from Its ABI
Instrument 44 PEOPLE & COMPANIES

30 Fueling Exploration of Mars: Challenges for Fuel 45 CALENDAR

Valve Controls, Actuators and Motors Operating on
the Red Planet

32 The Coolest Spot in the Universe

ON OUR COVER DID YOU KNOW?

This composite color image of the West-
ern Hemisphere was captured from the
NOAA GOES-16 satellite on Jan. 15, 2017,
using several of the 16 spectral channels
available on the satellites Advanced Base-
line Imager. The image, taken from 22,300
miles above the surface, shows North and
South America and the surrounding oceans.
Read more about GOES-16 on page 28.
In all instances, CSA CSM indicates a Corporate Sustaining Member of CSA.
Early registration is now available for the 27th Space
Cryogenics WorkshopJuly 5-7, 2017, in Oak Brook IL. Its
just $525 for CSA members through May 5. More information,
including details on the new Frederking student scholarships,
is available at http://2csa.us/scw.
CSA is offering four short courses at CEC-ICMC 2017.
Registration information and course descriptions are provided
at http://2csa.us/sc17
You can stay up to date on all CSA news by subscribing
to the CryoChronicle newsletter and CSA Newsflashes at
www.cryogenicsociety.org.

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 5 www.cryogenicsociety.org

 From the Executive Director
Cold Facts Magazine
Executive Editor Spring is Perhaps the most important
LAURIE HUGET
finally here in aspect of the Workshop is that it
Editor the Midwest serves as an opportunity to look at
BRIAN DUDLEY
and we are recent technology development and
Advertising Coordinator working see how it is transforming mission
KIM DURDEN
on our big designs and architectures, and how it
Online Marketing Manager summer plans. might generate future opportunities
JO SNYDER
and needs. What will be the
Graphic Designer Weve opened registration for the technology challenges, successes
ISRAEL REZA
Space Cryogenics Workshop, to be held and opportunities over the coming
CSA Board of Technical Directors July 5-7 at the Hyatt Lodge at McDonalds years? Come to the Space Cryogenics
Chairman Campus, Oak Brook, Illinois. You can Workshop to be held July 5-7, 2017,
JOHN WEISEND II register easily online (http://2csa.us/reg) and find out.
European Spallation Source (ERIC)
46 46-888 31 50 until July 5. Onsite registration will be
available, though wed ask you to let us CSA is also busy organizing four
President
MELORA LARSON, Jet Propulsion Laboratory know you are coming so we can plan excellent short courses to be held
818-354-8751
down to the last minute. on July 9, right after SCW, at the
Past President CEC/ICMC conference in Madison,
JAMES FESMIRE, NASA Kennedy
Cryogenics Test Laboratory | 321-867-7557 Online hotel registration (https:// Wisconsin. Weve chosen topics that
aws.passkey.com/go/CSAJUL2017) are very relevant to those working in
President-Elect
PETER SHIRRON, NASA Goddard is also open. A limited number of cryogenics right now. Be sure to read
Space Flight Center | 301-286-7327 government rate rooms were secured the details, beginning on page 40 of
Treasurer on a first come, first served basis. You this issue.
RICH DAUSMAN, Cryomech, Inc. must use the code GOVTCSA2017.
315-455-2555
Registration at the regular SCW rate We invite you to visit our table
Secretary is also available at this website. See at CEC/ICMC and share your news
JONATHAN DEMKO
LeTourneau University page 22 and 33 of this magazine for with us. This is a great opportunity to
more details. network with our members and other
Executive Director
LAURIE HUGET readers and we welcome you all!
Huget Advertising, Inc. | 708-383-6220 x 302
Why attend SCW? Here is an
Registered Agent excerpt from Dr. Peter Shirrons Space We hope to see many of you in
WERNER K. HUGET, Huget Advertising, Inc.
Cryogenics column in this issue. He Oak Brook and in Madison!
Technical Directors is not only a top scientist at NASA
KATHLEEN AMM, GE Global Research
Goddard, but also our CSA President-
elect, so his words are worth noting!
PETER BRADLEY, NIST, Boulder

LANCE COOLEY, Fermi National Accelerator

Laboratory
CSA Thanks Our 2017
Space Cryogenics Workshop Sponsors
SCOTT COURTS, Lake Shore Cryotronics, Inc.

EILEEN CUNNINGHAM, Meyer Tool & Mfg. Orbiter

TERRY GRIMM, Niowave, Inc.

PETER KNUDSEN, MSU/FRIB

CHRIS REY, Energy to Power Solutions (E2P)
MARK ZAGAROLA, Creare LLC Cryoco LLC Lake Shore Cryotronics, Inc.

Cold Facts (ISSN 1085-5262) is published six times per year by the
Cryogenic Society of America, Inc.
Contents 2017 Cryogenic Society of America, Inc.
Editorial Board
Randall Barron, Glen McIntosh, McIntosh Cryogenics
Although CSA makes reasonable efforts to keep the ret. Louisiana Tech University John Pfotenhauer, University of
information contained in this magazine accurate, the
information is not guaranteed and no responsibility is
Jack Bonn, VJ Systems, LLC Wisconsin-Madison
assumed for errors or omissions. CSA does not warrant Robert Fagaly, Leidos Ray Radebaugh, ret. NIST Boulder
the accuracy, completeness, timeliness or merchantabil- Brian Hands, ret. Oxford University Ralph Scurlock, Kryos Associates,
ity or fitness for a particular purpose of the information
contained herein, nor does CSA in any way endorse the Peter Kittel, ret. NASA Ames ret. University of Southampton
individuals and companies described in the magazine or Peter Mason, ret. Jet Propulsion Lab Nils Tellier, EPSIM Corporation
the products and services they may provide.

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 6 www.cryogenicsociety.org

Advancing Cryogenic Temperature Instrumentation
by Ryan Oliver, Lake Shore Cryotronics, ryan.oliver@lakeshore.com
Although helium was first liquefied
by H.K. Onnes in 1908, it wasnt until the
early 1950s that liquid helium became
more readily available, following the
development and commercialization of
the Collins Helium Cryostat. This allowed
large-scale production of liquid helium,
improving the accessibility of cryogenic
research.
This article explores the evolution of
the techniques used to measure and control
temperature since this time, with a focus
on cryogenic temperatures as a tool, rather
than techniques used by those working on
defining temperature scales. There were
many more advancements made over the
years than can be addressed in this article,
so key advances have been selected.
At the beginning of this time period,
platinum resistive temperature devices
(RTDs) were the most common sensing
element due to their use in defining the
international temperature scales ITS-27 and
IPTS-48. These platinum resistors were far
different from the industrial style sensors
used in todays systems. Most often, they
were capsule or long-stem thermometers
fabricated from high-purity platinum and
inserted into special sheaths chosen for
the temperature range and environment.
Though much larger and more expensive
than todays industrial platinum devices,
they were capable of measuring down
Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2
to around 2 K by some accounts with
good stability and repeatability. Various
companies still make these types of
standard platinum resistance thermometers
and calibrations are available from a few
national labs, including NIST in the USA
and PTB in Germany.
Before a universal standard for
platinum sensors began to emerge in the
early 1980s (now known as the DIN/IEC
60751 standard), differences in platinum
Vintage ad for TG-100 GaAs diode sensor.
Image: Lake Shore
8 www.cryogenicsociety.org
purities meant that each device behaved
differently and required initial calibration.
This required intercomparing with other
more tedious measurement techniques such
as vapor pressure thermometry.
To measure the resistance of these
sensors, special potentiometer thermometer
bridges were available from the 1940s on,
but they were expensive and normally
limited to metrology labs. More commonly,
once the platinum sensor was calibrated,
measurement of the resistance of these
devices was accomplished with do-it-
yourself systems built from separate current
sources and voltmeters. Great attention was
paid to the formulas that could be used to
convert resistance readings to equivalent
temperature values, as automated systems
to handle this conversion were not yet
available. Over the years these formulas
ranged in complexity from the rather
simple Callendar-Van Dusen equation
(still in use today) to the complex multi-
order polynomials used for IPTS-68 and the
currently accepted ITS-90 scales.
Of course, in this time period
multiple refrigeration methods existed
for attaining temperatures well below the
limit of platinums usefulness. Germanium
semiconductor RTDs (originally available
from Scientific Instruments, CryoCal and
Honeywell beginning in the late 1960s and
now available from Lake Shore Cryotronics)
became popular, providing highly stable and
repeatable measurements for temperatures
well below 1 K. Off-the-shelf carbon resistors
from Allen-Bradley and Speer had also been
found useful for this temperature range
but were plagued with problems relating
to temperature response shifts caused by
thermal cycling and helium absorption. This
made these devices somewhat inconvenient
to use but they were still one of the better
options available through the 1960s and
1970s. Carbon-Glass resistors developed at
Corning and commercialized for cryogenic
thermometry by Lake Shore provided a
viable alternative by offering a more stable
sensor with a wide temperature range and
low magnetic field offsets. The discovery of
commercially available ruthenium dioxide
and bismuth ruthenate film resistors (now
commonly referred to as RuOx) added yet
another viable RTD option.

These negative temperature coefficient

sensors (germanium, carbon, carbon-glass,
and RuOx RTDs) all provided extremely
high resolutions at temperatures below the
useful range of platinum. However, they
required more complex instrumentation
with selectable current excitation levels to
avoid self-heating at lower temperatures and
loss of resolution at higher temperatures.
Many instruments were capable of this,
including DC potentiometers (like the Leeds
and Northrup K-3), oscillators paired with
lock-in amplifiers, and even AC resistance
bridges for high-resolution, low-power
cryogenic measurements.
Luckily, many of the measurement
solutions for RTDs were easily adapted
for a new entrant to the cryogenic
sensor market in the late 1960s: the p-n
junction diode. Although they made use
of a different temperature dependence
mechanism (forward bias voltage rather
than ohmic resistance), they still required
an excitation current, and a resulting
voltage was measured to determine
temperature. Diodes had the advantage
of simpler instrumentation. Only one
current excitation level was required for
the entire useful temperature range and the
voltages generated by these diodes were
generally orders of magnitude higher than
RTDs. Coupled with the fact that the first
commercial diodes to be released (such as
IET Labs 1620. Image: IET Labs, Inc.
Lake Shore TG-100 GaAs diodes) exhibited
a very wide temperature range (2 to 300 K),
these sensors became quite popular and
allowed Lake Shore to expand into other
sensor opportunities.
Over the years, many other diodes
and transistor configurations have been
investigated. The industry has largely
settled on GaAlAs diodes (currently only
available from Lake Shore) and silicon
diodes (available from many suppliers),
with silicon enjoying an overwhelmingly
large share of the cryogenic temperature
sensor market.
Strontium titanate glass capacitor
sensors were developed and
commercialized shortly after the first diode
sensors and showed great promise as a
highly stable sensor for use in magnetic
fields. Unfortunately, these capacitors
were not able to take advantage of existing
measurement equipment used for RTDs
or diodes. Instead, a popular solution
at the time was the combination of a
capacitance bridge (such as the General
Radio [now IET Labs, Inc.] Type 1620).
In addition to requiring different
instrumentation, capacitance measurements
couldnt take advantage of the 4-lead
measurement technique used with RTDs
to negate the effect of lead resistance. Lead
capacitance could not easily be removed
from measurements, making it particularly
difficult to determine the capacitance of the
sensor itself in isolation from the connecting
wires. In time, it was also found that these
capacitance sensors suffered from drift
issues related to thermal cycling and high
voltages, making them useful in very
limited situations.
Capacitor sensor instrumentation
options have improved somewhat over
the years, with capacitance bridges still
being available, as well as a simplified,
less precise capacitance meter available
as an option in select Lake Shore
temperature controllers. Unfortunately,
no amount of instrumentation
improvements can solve the inherent
problems of the capacitance sensor
itself. An alternative sensor with high
sensitivity and no magnetic field-
induced errors at very low temperatures
is yet be found and remains one of the
industrys great opportunities.
X continues on page 10

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 9 www.cryogenicsociety.org

Growth of Cryogenic Temperature Instrumentation... Continued from page 9
Lake Shore CryotronicsDRC-80C temperature controller Image: Lake Shore
Cryo-Con 34 Image: Cryogenic Control Systems, Inc.
The closest alternative solution to
date came during the late 1990s with the
development of the thin-film zirconium
oxynitride RTD known as Cernox
(manufactured by Lake Shore). The ability to
use more common resistance measurement
techniques coupled with the vastly reduced
magnetoresistance in comparison to carbon-
glass and the wide useful temperature range
resulted in Cernox eventually becoming the
preferred choice for applications down to
100 mK.
With so many different sensor types
being developed over the years, it is
interesting to see the transition from do-it-
yourself temperature control setups to all-
in-one commercial offerings. By merging
current sources and voltage measurement
with output heater power, the cryogenic
temperature controller quickly became
indispensable for cryogenic research.
Purely analog devices were the first
to be released, usually focusing on a
specific sensor type allowing optimized
measurement performance. On-instrument
temperature conversion was yet to be
Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2
developed, so temperature comparisons
were simply made in sensor units. These
comparisons to a setpoint drove a heater
output to create the first generation
of closed loop control required for an
instrument to be classified as a temperature
controller. An example of this was the Lake
Shore TGC-100, designed specifically for
use with GaAs diodes and having just the
gain portion of the PID control common in
todays controllers.
As time went on, the proliferation of
PCs, microcontrollers, and digital displays
saw instruments continue to grow in
capability and usefulness. The addition
of internal temperature conversion using
calibration tables was perhaps the most
significant. Initially these were quite limited,
such as the Lake Shore DRC-80C, which
supported curves with only 28 points loaded
permanently onto a PROM (Programmable
Read-Only Memory), requiring the user to
remove the instrument top cover to install
the PROM for a new sensor.
By interpolating between those
points, the temperature in Kelvin could
be reported and controlled directly by
the instrument. This was a giant step
forward in usability, but it resulted in an
objectively less accurate measurement
than what was possible with the
previous generation of manual analog
instruments. The previous-generation
instruments were capable of milliKelvin
level accuracy, while this new generation
10
was listing accuracies of 100 mK when
used with a calibrated sensor.
The convenience of this feature
proved to outweigh the downsides, and
development continued to further improve
these numbers. It wasnt long before
controllers added support for temperature
conversion tables with as many as 200
reprogrammable sensor calibration points
in a single curve. Improvements were even
made to the interpolation method in some
instruments such as cubic-spline (used
in the Cryo-con 34). Improvements like
these have almost completely removed
the interpolation error that was present in
earlier models.
Ease of integration into larger-scale
computer controlled systems was also
added over time with a host of connectivity
options being added to controllers such as
GPIB, RS-232, USB, and Ethernet. Taking
this to the extreme was the Scientific
Instruments PC 2001 released in the late
1990s. It replaced most of the front interface
with a connected PC and was controlled
though a GUI.
More recently, manufacturers have
begun focusing more heavily on the
user experience, a trend being driven in
many industries following the success of
companies like Apple. An example of this
shift can be seen in the Stanford Research
Systems CTC100 that makes use of a large
touchscreen, just one of many cases of
temperature controller manufacturers
striving to make their instruments easier
to use.
Beyond ease-of-use considerations,
keeping pace with the advances and
needs of cryostat manufacturers has
also been a top priority for controller
manufacturers. Parameters such as number
of simultaneously supported sensors and
heater power have continued to grow as
cryostats increase in complexity and size.
Researchers and cryostat manufacturers
have a great range of sensor choices
available to them, with the dominant sensors
now being Cernox, RuOx, and platinum
RTDs, silicon diodes, and thermocouples.
www.cryogenicsociety.org
Modern instruments must have the
flexibility to support all of these sensor
types if their manufacturers wish to remain
competitive. Given this need for flexibility,
most systems today can be satisfied with
a single temperature controller with four
flexible sensor inputs and at least 100 W
of heater power (such as the Lake Shore
Model 336). These instruments have come a
long way since the early days of cryogenic
temperature controllers, greatly reducing
the amount of time and effort required to Lake Shore CryotronicsModel 336 temperature controller Image: Lake Shore
conduct cryogenic research.
their desired tasks. Some may lament the This, of course, assumes that some sort
Looking forward a little, there fact that this usually involves increasing of breakthrough in sensor research doesnt
still appears to be some appetite instrument automation, requiring less result in a game changer that requires a
in the market for general purpose and less knowledge from the users redesign of existing controller input stages.
controllers with additional heater on how cryogenic measurements and The development of a low- cost primary
power capabilities. Beyond this, sensor controls are performed. However, at the thermometer could easily do this, with various
measurement performance has largely end of the day, modern research projects technologies showing promise in recent years,
improved to the point where additional are complex enough without adding though none have come to fruition. This is
performance would not be noticed by difficulties associated with attaining where close ties between instrumentation
most users. Future instruments are likely a stable and reliable experiment space manufacturers and the research community
to see improvements in usability and temperature. Any improvements to ease will continue to be very important sources
convenience, thereby requiring less time of use will benefit the field of cryogenic for groundbreaking cryogenic temperature
and attention from the user to perform research. sensor development.

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 11 www.cryogenicsociety.org

 SPOTLIGHT ON A CORPORATE SUSTAINING MEMBER (CSA CSM)

Spaulding's Journey from Leatherboard to Fusion

In the late 19th century, the
Spaulding family of Townsend MA
probably didnt think the business they
were starting would become a contrib-
uting member of the most ambitious
energy project in the world today, but
thats just what happened.

Over the past two years, Spaulding

Composites has been working on ITER,
the Tokamak project in France, and after
prototype setup and testing, project
leaders approved Spaulding to supply
magnetic insulating components for the
gravity support structures in the heart of
ITERs plasma control system.

ITER engineers defined Spauldings

G-10 CR as a key component for this
control system due to its electrical and
thermal insulating capabilities and the
ability to meet the high radiation re-
quirements of the application. The grav-
ity supports for the Toroidal Field Coil
Structure use machined flat sheets and
blocks. Engineers interposed both flat
and curved elements in the Correction
Coil supports and designed cylindri-
cal sleeves into the Poloidal Field Coil
supports. Spaulding will deliver compo-
nents to the magnet manufacturer in the
summer and fall of 2017.
We are honored to have involve-
ment in such an exciting program.
Beginning in the late 1800s, the com-
pany has evolved and become a leader
in thermoset composites and laminates,
says Jen Green, marketing coordinator at
Spaulding. In digging up some history,
this quote surfaced from the words of
our founder, We are proud of all our
industries and the advancements they
have made over the years.
Spaulding has accomplished much
since its humble beginning in 1873 as
a manufacturing facility in Rochester
NH. By 1900, Jonas Spaulding was look-
ing to construct a second plant in New
Hampshire, this time a leatherboard mill
on a plot of land he discovered during a
buggy ride along the Salmon Falls River.
ITER Tokamak schematic showing Spaulding product locations. Image: ITER/Spaulding
The facility, under the name J.
Spaulding & Sons, took scrap leather from
shoe factories and fibrous materials such
as paper waste and wood pulp and com-
pressed the materials. Although times and
engineering have evolved, this composite
process of materials remains the founda-
tion of the composites business today.
The leatherboard manufacturing
plant in 1900 produced seven tons of
leatherboard per day. Unfortunately,
the 67-year-old Spaulding died before
construction was completed, leaving his
businesses to his three sons.
veloping the standards used today by
The men carried on running the com-
panies, but within a few years converted
the leatherboard plant to fiberboard. The
brothers developed a patent and, after the
purchase of new machinery, they began
producing shoe counters. The brothers
also acquired several auxiliary businesses
in the local areaincluding manufactur-
ing plants of fiberboard productsand
developed a subsidiary company to act as
the nucleus of material handling.
Over the course of the 20th century,
Spaulding became a leading participant
in the development of industrial com-
posite materials. Research broadened the
product base to utilize wood pulp, cotton,
fiberglass and Kevlar as base substrates
in combination with phenolic, silicone,
melamine and epoxy resins to achieve a
wide range of properties touching many
applications.
Spaulding also participated in de-
the National Electrical Manufacturers
Association to define the properties of
industrial composites. This develop-
ment work gave Spaulding a leading
role in composite markets for electrical
insulation and components, bearing
and wear, precision bearing retainers,
reverse osmosis, cryogenics and air
tool vanes.

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 12 www.cryogenicsociety.org

 The company name has changed over the years and it is now
known as Spaulding Composites. This company continues to
manufacture composite sheets and tubes as it did in the 1900s, as
well as many other products to support other industries. It has
produced tubes for the cryogenics industry for a few decades.
Other cryo-related items include dewar neck tubes, tank supports
and vacuum jacketed spacers.

In 1923, as the company celebrated its 50th anniversary, the

Spaulding brothers said, Today, as in our pioneer past, advance-
ment is made by men who refuse to be satisfied with the achieve-
ments, however many, of bygone years. And our industries are
ever on the move ahead to meet the challenges of a changing
world.

Spaulding Composites continues to manufacture its own ther-

moset composites, such as various grades of glass epoxy and G10
and G11. It is a vertically integrated manufacturer, and as such
has had the opportunity to be involved with a couple Tokamak
projects over the years, not just ITER.

In 1979, Spaulding Composites worked with the US

Department of Energy for a Fusion Research Project in Oak Ridge
TN. The project was designed to research the effects of radiation at
5 K on organic insulators for superconducting magnets. The study
used three types of Spaulding composites, the G-10 CR, G-10 and
G-11 CR. Research results from the study found that Spaulding
fiberglass-cloth filled epoxies retain sufficient strength for use.
The materials additionally provided an economical approach for
not only electrical insulation but also mechanical support desired
in coil insulation.

In a more recent study from 2015, Spaulding was asked to partner with
a superconducting magnet manufacturer in China. The project, which
used Spauldings G11-CR, was designed to support a particle accelerator
from the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (CSA CSM).
www.spauldingcomposites.com

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 13 www.cryogenicsociety.org

 SPOTLIGHT ON A CORPORATE SUSTAINING MEMBER (CSA CSM)

Tempshield Strengthens Its Grip

From a booth nestled amongst the
bustle of Pittcon 2017, the safety experts
from Tempshield Cryo-Protection qui-
etly unveiled a product line for which both
industry and researchers have clamored for
years, a waterproof glove with enhanced
grip. Dubbed Cryo-Grip, the new offering
is basically the companys current water-
proof glove enhanced with a different palm
material, but to a greater extent it represents
years of R&D and provides a much-needed
solution to a longstanding unfilled need in
the marketplace.

For a number of years now, people

have been asking for an enhanced grip
capability, says Paul Larochelle, COO at
Tempshield. It helps with handling small
articles, vials, specimen containers and so
forth from cassettes or trays within lab re-
frigerators or cryostats. Everything is slip-
pery in those cold and frosty environments,
and the intensity of slipperiness is so much
greater that they have a higher need for
better dexterity and grip on handling those
small instruments.
Cryo-Grip gloves are available in the
same configurations as the companys origi-
nal Waterproof Cryo-Glove, including all
styles and sizing. The gloves will also be avail-
able, when requested, in custom kits or as one
of Tempshields pink series of gloves, from
which the company donates 10 percent of
sales to breast cancer research and support.
The Tempshield booth at Pittcon 2017. Image: Tempshield
shipping to Tempshields domestic and in-
ternational distributor network.
Tempshield launched the first cryo-
genic glove in 1980, and since then has
continued to specialize in cryogenic per-
sonal protection. Tempshields focus on
cryogenic safety led to the development of a
line of personal protection products known
worldwide for outstanding workmanship,
maximum thermal protection, dexterity
and comfort, says Larochelle. We moni-
tor every phase of production from product
development to distribution at our facility
in Trenton ME.
cryogenics industry but not to small business.
Over the past 15 years, he has owned four differ-
ent businesses in Maine, mostly in the logistics
industry. I think Laura and I both saw this as an
opportunity where I could come in and maybe
add some energy and drive the company for-
ward, he says. Our products are great. Our
production capabilities and our management
team are excellent. And we are making things
and selling them all around the world. And
were making them here in Maine. Thats a good
story. I like that. www.tempshield.com

Larochelle says finding a material that
provided grip when exposed to cryogenic
temperatures was challenging. Theres some
great materials out there that have great grip
at room temperature, but after being exposed
to cold they become extremely brittle and
fail, he says. Any of the silicon coated ma-
terials will crack. Urethane materials crack.
It wasnt until a couple of years ago that we
came up with a material.
A battery of physical tests followed the
discovery, including thermal testing and
cryogenic immersion testing undertaken
by both Tempshield and an industry part-
ner. Larochelle says the testing and field
trials went well and that the product is now
Tempshields design, R&D and work-
manship has earned trust and respect from
several medical, scientific and industrial firms
worldwide. And it has also attracted the atten-
tion of several copycat manufacturers. There
are a lot of imitation gloves out there, says
Drew Gilman, Tempshield owner and opera-
tor. Just go on Amazon and type in cryogenic
glove and youll see they all look the same.
Every competitor makes a royal blue glove
with a label in the exact same place. Its frus-
trating, but we are the industry leader. Were
out in front on the research and development.
Gilman acquired the company in January
2017, after Laura Sweeney, one of the com-
pany founders, retired. Gilman is new to the

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 14 www.cryogenicsociety.org

 SPOTLIGHT ON A CORPORATE SUSTAINING MEMBER (CSA CSM)
Oxford Probes Nanostructure Experiment
Tucked away in his lab at the National
University of Singapore (NUS), physics pro-
fessor Barbaros zyilmaz and his research
group are performing cutting-edge graphene
experiments.
Intrinsic spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in
graphene is weak, making graphene a prom-
ising material for spintronics, where the
long spin mean-free-path of charge carriers
is essential for practical purposes. However,
weak SOC also means poor control of the
spin. This limitation has been overcome by
using the proximity effect when graphene
is deposited on a tungsten disulphide sub-
strate, which has strong SOC.
In a study of non-local magnetoresis-
tance in graphene deposited on top of tung-
sten disulphide, the researchers at zyilmazs
lab needed a high magnetic field with two
orientations with respect to the graphenes
plane. The measurements were essential to
Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2
Specially designed measurement probes. Image: Oxford Instruments
distinguish between orbital and spin effects,
and so the team used a rotational probe to
conduct the experiments without exposing
samples to ambient conditions.
The team also used the TeslatronPT
Cryofree superconducting magnet system
from Oxford Instruments to control temper-
ature and sweep magnetic field.
The TeslatronPT superconducting
magnet systems provide magnetic fields
up to 18 T, using integrated variable tem-
perature inserts to achieve sample tempera-
tures from 1.5 K to 300 K. This capability
16
allows researchers to take measurements
for innovative experiments in the field of
nanotechnology and nanostructures, such
as zyilmazs experiment at NUS for gra-
phene and 2D materials research.
For the experiment, Oxford Instruments
NanoScience developed two special measure-
ment probes for sample loading, one of them
with automated perpendicular rotation. The
feature provided environmental sample pro-
tection that researchers used to perform experi-
ments without exposing samples to ambient
conditions. www.oxford-instruments.com/
businesses/nanotechnology/nanoscience
www.cryogenicsociety.org
 SPOTLIGHT ON A CORPORATE SUSTAINING MEMBER (CSA CSM)
EPSIM Designs Indoor LOX
Plant Test Facility for US Navy
Figure 1: LOX plant test center at RIX Industries Image: EPSIM
When the US Navy awarded RIX
Industries, Benicia CA, the contract for an
advanced liquid oxygen (LOX) plant to
equip its new aircraft carrier USS Gerald
R. Ford (CVN-78), the most technologically
advanced aircraft carrier ever designed, one
requirement was a new certified facility ca-
pable of testing the LOX plant indoors.
Developing a test cell for an oxygen
plant is not a common exercise, so RIX
turned to EPSIM Corporation, Boulder CO,
to design the test facility.
EPSIM focused on safety, both passive
and active, as its first priority, according to
Nils Tellier, the companys PE and an en-
gineer with 25 years experience with cryo-
genic plant construction and start-up.
He says the facility needed to ensure
safety without sacrificing the functional-
ity needed to measure performance, swap
equipment and perform maintenance.
The value of the test cell investment,
Tellier says, is fully realized by RIX per-
sonnels dedication to safety and quality.
RIX dedicated part of its warehouse
building to host the 750-ft. test cell. The test
equipment consisted of Vacuum Switch
Adsorption generators, a Sterling acous-
tic liquefier and a LOX storage skid, each
weighing between 3,000 and 12,000 lbs.
Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2
The enclosure needed to follow
guidelines from the Compressed Gas
Association. One challenge for EPSIM
was the ingress/egress for the forklift.
Engineers addressed the issue with the
addition of a fire-rated double door,
underneath which a small and slanted
threshold would contain a LOX spill
within the cell.
EPSIM routed LOX purging outside
the building to a disposal fan supplied
by Cryogenic Experts, Oxnard CA, and
all plant data acquisition and controls
(SCADA) were replicated outside the test
enclosure to minimize personnel exposure
during equipment runs. EPSIM also speci-
fied an ambient air analyzer to control a
high volume fan, motorized louver doors
and beacon lights. And in the event of a
high oxygen environment, the whole build-
ing can be swept with outside air so thatin
a worst-case scenario of a LOX spillsafe
oxygen concentration is recovered within
minutes in the entire warehouse.
On the active safety aspect, EPSIM
focused on training, personal protection
equipment and cleanliness to play the pre-
dominant role. When the facility was com-
pleted, EPSIM provided RIX employeees
and local firefighters with a two-day course
on the safe handling of cryogenic liquids
and oxygen-rich environment hazards.
www.epsim.us
19 www.cryogenicsociety.org
 Defining Cryogenics
by Dr. John Weisend II, European Spallation Source ERIC, CSA chairman, john.weisend@esss.se
Space Cryogenics
S
pace cryogenics is, somewhat obvi-
ously, the application of cryogenics
to space exploration and science. The
use of cryogenics in space optimizes the
launching of vehicles, provides power and
life support to spacecraft and is critical for
many scientific observations.
Space cryogenics has a number of chal-
lenges and has driven both pure and applied
research and development in areas including
He II (Defining Cryogenics, Cold Facts Spring
2010); cryocoolers (Defining Cryogenics,
Cold Facts Winter 2009); liquid acquisition,
cryogen storage and adiabatic demagnetiza-
tion refrigerators (Defining Cryogenics, Cold
Facts Spring 2011); phase separators (Defining
Cryogenics, Cold Facts Vol. 31 #5); and zero
boiloff systems (Defining Cryogenics, Cold
Facts Summer 2009).
This work has also been important in
training specialists in cryogenics who now
work throughout the cryogenics industry.
An early use of cryogenics in space sys-
tems was in the liquefaction, transport and
storage of liquid hydrogen (LH2) (Defining
Cryogenics, Cold Facts April 2014) and liq-
uid oxygen (LOX) for use as rocket fuels.
The advantage of cryogenics here is the sub-
stantial volume reduction found in convert-
ing these materials into liquids, permitting
a sufficient mass of the fuel to be carried
within a rockets limited available volume.
Launch systems including the Saturn
V, Space Shuttle and Ariane 5 have all used
cryogenic fuels, and the application con-
tinues to be important. The Space Launch
System currently under development by
NASA, for example, also uses cryogenic
fuels, and the need to maintain cryogenic
fuels and LOX supplies for long duration
missions is a principal motivation behind
the development of zero boiloff systems.
LH2 and LOX are also used in fuel
cells to provide spacecraft power, while
Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2
Figure 1: Hydrogen and oxygen tanks developed by Ball Aerospace for the Apollo Program. Image: An overview
of Ball Aerospace cryogen storage and delivery systems, J. Marquardt et al. Adv. Cryo. Engr. (IOP Conf. Series: Materials
Science and Engineering 101, 2015). http://2csa.us/creativecommons
LOX is additionally used, of course, to pro-
vide breathable air for astronauts. Figure 1
shows LH2 and LOX tanks developed for
the Apollo Program.
Another important application of cryo-
genics in space is the cooling of sensors and
instruments to the proper operating tem-
perature to allow scientific measurements.
These temperatures range from sub-Kelvin
temperatures for X-ray detectors to 2 K for
infrared astronomy and up to tens of K for
Earth observation instruments.
More and more, these cooling applica-
tions are being carried out by mechanical
cryocoolers, eliminating the need for cryo-
genic liquids. A disadvantage of cryogenic
liquids is that once they have boiled away,
the cooling and thus the observations stop.
At the lowest temperatures, engineers
typically employ adiabatic demagnetiza-
tion refrigerators. Cooling by passively
radiating heat into space is also an option
but has some limits, and the lowest achiev-
able temperature depends on how close
the spacecraft is to Earth, moon and sun.
Typically, engineers use passive radiators
in the 30 100 K range. Figure 2 shows the
Integrated Science Instrument Module for
the James Webb Space Telescope with the
20
Near Infrared Spectrograph prominently
displayed. The sensors of the spectrograph
will operate at around 40 K.
Space cryogenic applications include
not only the equipment launched into space
but all the support, test and research fa-
cilities on the ground. As an example, very
large cryogenic vacuum chambers are used
to test a spacecrafts ability to function in the
cold, airless environment of space.
There are also unique challenges in
space cryogenics not found in other areas
of cryogenics. The allowable weight and
size of cryogenic systems used in space is
restricted and the sytems must withstand
the severe shock and vibration of launch.
Once in space, there is no gravity to
separate the liquid from vapor in cryogenic
tanks and so engineers are required to use ap-
proaches such as wire meshes that use surface
tension to direct liquid and porous plug phase
separators to vent He II storage tanks.
Given the remoteness of space, reliabil-
ity is paramount. Significant development
work has been done over the years to im-
prove the reliability of terrestrial cryogenic
systems, such as cryocoolers, so that they
are suitable for space applications. This
www.cryogenicsociety.org
 A good survey of cryocoolers for space
applications is given in Space Cryocooler
Developments, L. Duband, Proc. ICEC 25
(Physics Procedia 67 - 2015). A broad survey
of instrument cooling approaches is pro-
vided in Cryogenics in Space: A Review
of the Missions and of the Technologies,
B. Collaudin et al., Cryogenics 40 (2000). A
detailed case study of a space cryogenic
system is The Superfluid Helium On-Orbit
Transfer (SHOOT) Flight Demonstration,
M. DiPirro in Cryostat Design, J.G. Weisend
II (Ed), Springer (2016).

A recent example of a cryogenic pro-

pulsion system is Cryogenic Propulsion
for the Titan Orbiter Polar Surveyor
(TOPS) Mission, S. Mustafi et al.,
Cryogenics 74 (2016). And Simulated
Figure 2: A view of the Integrated Science Instrument Module for the James Webb Space Telescope showing the Propellant Loading System: Testbed
Near Infrared Spectrograph on the right hand side. Image: NASA/Chris Gunn for Cryogenic Component and Control
Systems Research and Development,
improved reliability then benefits Earth- Cryogenics Workshop (www.spacecryogen- J. Toro Edina et al., Adv. Cryo. Engr.
bound applications. icsworkshop.org), and papers on space cryo- (IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and
genics are also presented at the Cryogenic Engineering 101 2015) provides a good
Additional information on space cryo- Engineering Conference and the International example of the scale of ground test equip-
genics is available at the biannual Space Cryogenic Engineering Conference. ment required for space cryogenics.

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 21 www.cryogenicsociety.org

 Space Cryogenics
by Dr. Peter Shirron, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, peter.shirron@nasa.gov

Space Cryogenics for the Next Decade (or Two)

T
echnology development and innova-
tion are the lifeblood of any scientific
or engineering discipline. Discoveries
are, on occasion, instant game changersthe
1987 discovery of high temperature super-
conductors comes to mindbut more often
advances are incremental and only over time
do we see the emergence of new capabilities
and their use in the field.

This timeline for advancement has

been my experience with space cryogenics.
The complexity of space cryogenic systems
and the challenges of developing systems
suitable for low gravity mean that years, if
not decades, of investment are needed to
move from a technology concept to flight
implementation.

Successful launches of cryogenic mis-
sions occur less frequently than we might
like, but they are always highlighted and
celebrated as a success for the whole com-
munity. As such, one of the highlights for me
of working in this field is attending the Space
Cryogenics Workshop every two years and
seeing steady progress on large-scale projects
and technology development, swapping war
stories of failures and near misses.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the
Workshop, however, is that it serves as an op-
portunity to look at recent technology develop-
ment and see how it is transforming mission
designs and architectures, and how it might
generate future opportunities and needs.
For example, if any single cryogenic
technology that has emerged over the last
couple decades could be called disruptive,
it would be cryocoolers. I use the term dis-
ruptive in both the technical and personal
senses. Let me explain.
In the early 1990s, the NASA Centers
at Goddard and Ames were working
jointly on the Superfluid Helium On-Orbit
Transfer (SHOOT) flight demonstration
that flew on the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Tactical microcooler. Image DRS Technologies, Inc.
The successful launches of IRAS and COBE
in the 1980swhich established cryogen-
ics and low temperature detectors as core
competencies for the future of space as-
tronomymotivated engineers working on
SHOOT. Both IRAS and COBE used super-
fluid helium as the primary coolant, but had
limited lifetimes (~10 months) as a result.
Led by Michael DiPirro (NASA/GSFC), en-
gineers conducted SHOOT to demonstrate
the technologies needed to refill an orbiting
satellite with liquid helium to extend its life.
A future line of work seemed assured.
But at the same time cryocoolers
were being funded by ESA, JAXA and
NASAs Advanced Cryocooler Technology
Development Program, in anticipation
of use on long duration missions like the
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and
Constellation-X (which has undergone
many iterations to emerge as Athena). As
cryocooler technology became established,
the need for helium and helium transfer
capability seemed to evaporate. Our then-
Branch Head, Steve Castles, welcomed us
to the future with a simple statement that
there will be life after SHOOT.
And he was right. Even though we
were sensing a decline in the technology
area we specialized insuperfluid helium
systemsspace cryogenics would remain
essential. We may not have foreseen how
space cryogenics would evolve, but Steve
knew it would, and that the changes occur-
ring would fuel the push and pull that cre-
ates new opportunities for innovation.
Cryocoolers have now all but replaced
stored cryogens as a means to achieve low
operating temperature in space. JWST
initially considered the use of superfluid
helium, but its limitations, cost and com-
plexity eventually forced the decision to
use the Northrop Grumman pulse tube/
Joule-Thomson cryocooler.
All missions in the study and planning
phases that require cryogenic cooling are
baselining cryocoolers. Astro-H was, it is now
clear, a lone holdout when, in 2007, it made
the decision to use superfluid helium, with
an array of Stirling and Joule-Thomson cryo-
coolers, to implement a redundant cryogenic
system. (Because of my personal involvement
on Astro-H, the life of which ended after only

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 22 www.cryogenicsociety.org

38 days in orbit, I am happy to cryocoolers over the largest
report that JAXA and NASA temperature range possible and
have agreed to fund a replace- to limit the temperature range
ment mission, presently going and number of refrigeration
by the name XARM, the X-ray stages at the lowest temperature
Astrophysics Recovery Mission. (sub-Kelvin in the examples
The X-ray spectrometer instru- given). However, gas-based
ment supplied by NASA will use cryocoolers lose efficiency rap-
essentially the same cryogenic idly at low temperature com-
system, so superfluid helium is pared to, for example, magnetic
not done yet!) refrigeration.

The current state of the NASA/GSFC is beginning

technology is that a wide variety a development program for an
of coolers have been flight dem- ADR capable of continuous cool-
onstrated. The majority operate ing at 4 K using a 10 K cryocooler.
at a relatively high temperature The target is 20 mW at 4 K, requir-
(50-80 K), but a significant num- ing 80-100 mW of cooling power
ber can operate at 4.5 K. at 10 K. Technologies such as this
have been hampered by a lack
JAXA (through Sumitomo of low-current high temperature
Heavy Industries) has for quite superconducting magnets (0.5-1
a while had an operational 1.7 K Tesla per amp, and 3-4 Tesla ca-
Joule-Thomson cryocooler pability), but recent advances in
(though it has not yet dem- Northrop Grumman pulse tube microcooler. Image: Northrop Grumman. Nb3Sn, MgB2 and HTS magnets
onstrated it in space) and other have made it feasible.
groups are working to push systems into that
regime. Collectively, these can meet a wide Future missions, trying to extract as
range of applications, from detector cooling to much science as possible for the least cost
liquefaction and zero-boiloff storage of cryo- which for cryogenic systems means lowest
gen for life support and propulsion. mass and powerwill provide a strong push
for more efficient cooling chains, with cooling
But of course the field is still growing, capacities highly tailored to each application.
with expansion occurring in two important Hybrid systems can offer such performance
areas. The first is the development of mini improvement and customization.
and micro coolers. The accompanying pho-
tos show microcoolers made by Lockheed Creating an optimized cooling chain
Martin, Northrop Grumman and DRS is still, however, only part of the challenge
Technologies, although other manufacturers for future missions. Many applications re-
such as RICOR have also created devices, and quire further advances in various support
there is pioneering work at the University of technologies related to the distribution of
Twente in sorption microcoolers. cooling and waste heat, structural supports
Lockheed Martin pulse tube microcooler and current leads, especially HTS leads with
Microcoolers are primarily intended Image: Lockheed Martin Corporation 2013 low thermal conductance, low or high emis-
to operate with large-format IR detector has a significant history already: Herschel sivity coatings, etc.
arrays (such as HgCdTe) in the 80-120 K employed a helium-3 sorption refrigerator
range, with cooling powers of a few tenths coupled to superfluid helium; Planck used an In particular, heat pipes are showing a
of a watt and consuming tens of watts of open-cycle dilution refrigerator supported by lot of promise for a range of functions such
input power. A particular virtue, based on a 4 K cryocooler and helium sorption system; as distributing cooling from localized sources
low mass and power, is that engineers can and Astro-H used an adiabatic demagnetiza- over broad areas and thermally connecting
employ microcoolers in applications such as tion refrigerator (ADR) with a cryogenic sys- redundant cryocoolers to their loads.
rovers, where power is extremely limited. tem composed of a superfluid helium tank,
a 4.5 K Joule-Thomson cooler and pairs of What will be the technology chal-
Another emerging area is hybrid cooling Stirling cryocoolers. lenges, successes and opportunities over
systems, where different types of cryocool- the coming years? Come to the Space
ers are combined to achieve wider operat- The philosophy embraced to date Cryogenics Workshop to be held July
ing range or higher efficiency. The concept has essentially been to use mechanical 5-7, 2017, and find out.

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 23 www.cryogenicsociety.org

 Cryo-Oops
by John Jurns, senior cryogenic engineer, European Spallation Source ERIC, john.jurns@esss.se
Duct Tape and Bailing Wire
Introduction
W
hat I consider to be one of the
characteristics of a good engineer
is a measure of ingenuity. Fixing
mistakes most often requires a thorough in-
vestigation into the cause, analyzing and de-
signing an appropriate fix, implementing the
solution and taking whatever steps you can
to make sure it doesnt happen again. But real
problems also often require timely solutions.
Which, said another way, means that some-
timeswe just have to improvise.
Caveat: Improvising does not mean that
we use the wrong part or material, and it does
not mean that we skip analyses, compromise
function or compromise safety. What it can
mean is that we think outside the box, using
sound engineering judgment, looking for novel
solutions, and seeing what might be readily at
hand that can solve our problem.
Oops
A few years ago, I wrote about a liquid
nitrogen test rig we had built to measure the
size and distribution of liquid nitrogen drop-
lets from a spray nozzle. The analysis tool we
used to measure the droplets was a laser and
photo-detector based on the Fraunhofer dif-
fraction technique. The low power laser was
shot through the LN2 spray and the diffraction
measured on the photo-detector. This process
required aligning the laser and detector before
turning on the LN2 spray.
The detector was mounted on a ring with
three spring-loaded screws for adjustment.
While aligning the detector, I got a little too
ambitious with the screwdriver and backed
out one of the screws all the way. The screw
and spring fell to the ground, and despite my
frantic search, the spring was lost (well, in my
defense, it was a pretty small spring).
So, now I had a non-functioning instru-
ment and figured that I would have to call the
manufacturer and ask for a replacement spring.
It was at this point that our lab technician su-
pervisor poked his head in the door to see how
Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2
things were going. Not well, I said. Any idea
where I can find a spring to replace the one I just
lost? He took a look at the instrument, pulled a
retractable ballpoint pen out of his shirt pocket,
unscrewed it, and handed me the spring from
inside the pen. How about this? he said.
It fit perfectly and we were up and
running in five minutes.
My next story goes back to early in my ca-
reer when I was designing cryogenic storage
systems. We had designed and built an LN2
dewar and piping system that was to be in-
stalled on a ship as part of a nitrogen inerting
system. The piping included a compact heat
exchanger that used steam on the shell side
to vaporize and warm the nitrogen from the
dewar. An engineer from the customer came
to our shop to witness a factory acceptance
test before we shipped the unit. For some rea-
son, I wasnt aware that this also included a
performance test of the heat exchanger.
We had no steam available at our shop,
and I was stumped as to how to provide
steam so we could finish our tests without
a huge investment and delay in schedule.
My much older and wiser boss contem-
plated the problem for a while and then
said something like why dont you go and
buy a commercial steam cleaner? I did a
bit of digging and found we could indeed
purchase a small commercial unit with the
required capacity for a few hundred dollars.
A few minor modifications and several days
later, we had our steam source and finished
the test. And to boot, now we had a nice
little steam cleaner we could use in the
shop! By the way, this was a long time ago,
so dont expect to find these units for only
a few hundred dollars anywhere any more.
My last story is from a former col-
league who was famous for his ability to
come up with novel solutions to problems.
Apparently, he had built a test rig in the
basement of one of our facilities. The safety
committee reviewed the installation and
25
had expressed concern about groundwater
getting into the facility since it was under-
ground. My colleague said no problem; he
would get an alarm that would alert people
if the basement started to flood.
When the safety committee came back,
the members found that my colleague had at-
tached two shims of copper to a spring loaded
clothespin, ran wires to an audible alarm, and
had inserted an aspirin between the two cop-
per shims. If there were any water in the base-
ment, the aspirin would dissolve, closing the
copper contacts and sounding an alarm.
Lessons Learned
When I think back over these and similar
incidents, it makes me realize that there are
solutions to problems all around us. There is
almost always more than one way to skin a
cat (dear PETA people, I am only using this
term figuratively). When looking for a solu-
tion to a problem, consider first what that
solution should look like, not necessarily
the most obvious place to find that solution.
Engineering principles are the same whether
you find your solution from an OEM or a local
hardware store. If you can find a solution that
meets the technical, warranty and regulatory
requirements from a source previously not
considered, go ahead and use it!
Also, as my stories relate, take advantage
of experienced people. They have often en-
countered similar problems in their past, and
know how to come up with good solutions
based on their years of problem-solving.
Summary
Remember to look outside the box
when you run into a problem. Use sound
engineering judgment, solicit help from ex-
perienced people and as said in Hitchhikers
Guide to the Galaxy, Dont Panic.
As always, we invite you to share your
oops stories with us. Send them to Brian
Dudley at editor@cryogenicsociety.org and
well try and include them in this column.
www.cryogenicsociety.org
Pulsating Heat Pipes Hold Promise for
Future Space Flight
by Prof. Franklin Miller, Cryogenic Engineering Laboratory, University of Wisconsin Madison, SCW Co-Chairman, fkmiller@wisc.edu

As space flight missions forces dominate and a PHP partially

move away from tanks filled filled with vapor and liquid has re-
with cryogenic liquids towards gions that are filled with liquid or
cryocoolers to provide cooling vapor slugs. It is important to note that
for cryogenic payloads, new in the case where the PHP has many
heat transport technologies turns the effect of gravity becomes neg-
are needed to cool distributed ligible, which is especially important
systems. for microgravity applications.

High purity metals such as PHPs have a self-induced oscil-

copper and aluminum provide latory movement due to the volume
high thermal conductivity at contraction and expansion of the
cryogenic temperatures but liquid and vapor slugs and therefore
have overall system conduc- they require no pump or wick to in-
tance that scales inversely with duce fluid motion.
length and linearly with cross-
sectional area. This means that Possible applications for PHPs
the mass of thermal buses made include distributed cooling for op-
of these materials becomes pro- tics/detectors for IR systems and dis-
hibitive for thermal transport of tributed cooling for thermal shields
significant heat loads over long on cryofluid tanks.
distances.
Engineers at several research
Other options for distrib- institutions have conducted re-
uting cryogenic cooling include Schematic representation of a Pulsating Heat Pipe. Image: Luis Diego Fonseca cent experimental work on cryo-
pumped fluid systems or heat genic PHPs with promising results.
pipes utilizing two-phase heat transfer. oscillating) heat pipes (PHPs) at laborato- Experimental characterization of 4 K
Heat transfer by circulating fluids is a bet- ries and universities in several countries. helium PHPs is ongoing, for example,
ter option than solid conductors because at the Chinese Academy of Sciences,
the overall conductance of fluid systems A pulsating heat pipe, shown schemati- Zhejiang University, CAE Grenoble, and
does not drop off over the thermal length cally in Figure 1, consists of a closed tube that the Cryogenics Engineering Laboratory
as it does with solids. Several flight-ready is bent into multiple loops and divided into (CEL) at UW-Madison.
technologies exist, including pumped fluid three main sections: condenser, evaporator
loops and heat pipes. More recently, re- and adiabatic section. The tube is sufficiently Researchers have studied PHPs
searchers have investigated pulsating (or small in diameter such that surface tension with adiabatic lengths up to 1 m that use

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 26 www.cryogenicsociety.org

hydrogen as a working fluid and have re-
ported effective thermal conductivities as
high as 100,000 W/mK for these systems.
Effective conductivity is defined as:
Most recently at UW-Madison, engi-
neers used PHPs with three evaporators
and one condenser to evaluate the perfor-
mance of PHPs operating with distributed
non-uniform heat loading. Tests were con-
ducted with helium at load temperatures
equal to 4 K and with nitrogen at load tem-
peratures equal to 80 K, and show that the
performance with non-uniform heat loads is
similar to performance for PHPs with uni-
form heat loading.
The low mass, high conductance, sim-
plicity of construction, insensitivity to the
magnitude of gravity and tolerance of non-
uniform distributed heat loads make PHPs
a potentially promising cryogenic technol-
ogy for future space flight missions.

where Q is the heat load applied at the CSA Thanks Our May
evaporator section, Tevap and Tcond are
the evaporator and condenser sections
CryoChronicle and Newsflashes Sponsor
temperatures respectively. Leff is the
adiabatic length and Ac is the total cross- WEKA AG

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The author recognizes that effective Orbiter
thermal conductivity does not entirely
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is reported in the literature for these de-
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vices and does provide some indication
of the relative performance between PHP For sponsor information contact Kim Durden at kim@cryogenicsociety.org.
designs.

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 27 www.cryogenicsociety.org

 GOES-16 Transmits First Images
from Its ABI Instrument

GOES-16 will offer three times more spectral channels with four times
greater resolution. This image shows a significant storm system that
crossed North America on January 15, 2017. Image: NASA/NOAA

GOES-16, the first spacecraft in

the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administrations (NOAA) next generation
of geostationary satellites, has sent the first
high-resolution images from its Advanced
Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument. Included
is a composite color full-disk visible image
of the Western Hemisphere captured on
January 15, 2017, created using several of
the ABIs 16 spectral channels.

The full-disk image offers an example

of the satellites advanced technology. The
ABI can provide a full disk image of the
Earth every 15 minutes, one of the conti-
nental US every five minutes, and has the
ability to target regional areas where severe
weather, hurricanes, wildfires, volcanic
eruptions or other high-impact environ-
mental phenomena are occurring as often
as every 30 seconds.
Seeing these first images from
GOES-16 is a foundational moment for
the team of scientists and engineers who
worked to bring the satellite to launch
and are now poised to explore new
weather forecasting possibilities with
this data and imagery, says Dr. Stephen
First day comparison between GOES-16 (left) and GOES-13, the previous best instrument. Image: NASA/NOAA
Volz, NOAAs assistant administrator
for Satellite and Information Services
in Silver Spring MD. The incredibly
sharp images are everything we hoped
for based on our tests before launch. We
look forward to exploiting these new im-
ages along with our partners in the me-
teorology community to make the most
of this fantastic new satellite.
The ABI covers the Earth five times
faster than the current generation GOES
imagers and has four times greater spatial
resolution, allowing meteorologists to see
smaller features of the Earths atmosphere
and weather systems.
The image is much more than a
pretty picture, it is the future of weather
observations and forecasting, says Dr.
Louis W. Uccellini, director of NOAAs
National Weather Service in Silver
Spring. High resolution imagery from
GOES-16 will provide sharper and more

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 28 www.cryogenicsociety.org


This 16-panel image shows the continental United States in the two visible, four near-infrared
and 10 infrared channels on ABI. Image: NASA/NOAA
detailed views of hazardous weather
systems and reveal features that previ-
ous instruments might have missed, and
the rapid-refresh of these images will
allow us to monitor and predict the evo-
lution of these systems more accurately.
As a result, forecasters can issue more
accurate, timely and reliable watches
and warnings, and provide better in-
formation to emergency managers and
other decision makers.
Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2
The Harris Corporation built the
ABI, and a High Efficiency Cryocooler
(HEC) system from Northrop Grumman
keeps the instrument at operational tem-
peratures.
A HEC system consists of a pulse
tube cryocooler and cryocooler control
electronics. Each cooler system has two
temperature stage coolers that provide
the cryogenic cooling and temperature
29
control for ABIs high performance infra-
red detectors and optics. The cryocool-
ers are essential for proper operation of
the ABI optics and infrared detectors,
which need to be cooled to cryogenic
temperatures.
High thermal efficiency, superior
cooling capacity and reliability are key
factors for critical space missions, says
Chris Yamada, vice president and gen-
eral manager of aerospace products at
Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems.
We are proud of the leadership position
of our Northrop Grumman cryocooler
product lines.
NASA launched GOES-R, renamed
GOES-16 when it achieved orbit, on
November 19, 2016, from Cape Canaveral
Air Force Station in Florida. The satellite is
now observing the planet from an equato-
rial view approximately 22,300 miles above
the surface of the Earth.
In May, NOAA will announce a final
location for GOES-16 and by November
2017, the satellite will be operational in ei-
ther the GOES-East or GOES-West position.
Following on the heels of GOES-
16 is GOES-S, which NOAA expects to
launch in Spring 2018. GOES-S is cur-
rently undergoing environmental test-
ing at Lockheed Martin Corporations
Littleton CO facility, where it was built.
A full set of environmental, mechanical
and electromagnetic tests will take about
one year to complete. After its initial on-
orbit checkout the GOES-S satellite will be
moved into the other operational position
as GOES-17.
NOAAs satellites are the backbone of
its life-saving weather forecasts. GOES-16
will build upon and extend the more than
40-year legacy of satellite observations from
NOAA that the American public has come
to rely upon.
NOAA manages the GOES-R Series
Program through an integrated NOAA-
NASA office. NASAs Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt MD oversees the
acquisition of the GOES-R series spacecraft
and instruments.
www.cryogenicsociety.org
Fueling Exploration of Mars: Challenges for
Fuel Valve Controls, Actuators and Motors
Operating on the Red Planet
by Richard Halstead, President, Empire Magnetics, rick@empiremagnetics.com

Engineers at NASA are working on a

long-term problem. The challenge is how to
return astronauts from Mars after they have
completed their mission. While the cost of
launching something into Earth orbit is ex-
pensive, sending fuel from Earth to Mars to
support the return to Earth is not just pro-
hibitively expensive, it is also technically
out of reach.

To address this problem, engineers are

updating an older liquid fuel rocket tech-
nology. The idea is to send a robotic factory
to Mars in advance of a manned mission.
This factory will take water that has been
identified on the Martian surface and, using
solar power, it will split the water into hy-
drogen and oxygen. The hydrogen will be
combined with carbon dioxide from the
Martian atmosphere to make methane. Both
the oxygen and methane will be liquefied
for use as rocket fuel.
To support this plan, NASA engineers
need to upgrade the fuel valve controls on the
liquid fuel rockets. These valves control the
flow of super-cold liquid methane and oxygen.
While the old valve actuators were simple on/
off units, the new ones need to be proportional
in order to improve flight control. At the same
time the weight of the assembly must be mini-
mized, as every pound of payload requires large
amounts of fuel to make the round trip from
Earth to Mars and back.
In addition to the cold temperatures,
these valves and their actuators are sub-
jected to a number of other environmental
issues. As the rocket sits on the launch pad,
the gases in the atmosphere will create
frost. During launch the valves and their
actuators are subject to pressure changes,
temperature changes, shock and vibra-
tion. After long-term exposure to vacuum
in deep space, the actuators are required to
reliably operate during the Mars landing
Figure 1: Offset gear arrangement. Image: Empire Magnetics
where shock, vibration, pressure and tem-
perature changes all occur again.
Once on the surface of Mars, the vehicle
will sit while fuel is accumulated for the re-
turn trip, which can take years. During this
time, the return vehicle will be subject to
some of the famous Martian dust storms,
as well as daily thermal cycles ranging up
to approximately 100C. Of course a critical
time of operation is during launch, but after
the blast-off from Mars, the system, back in
orbit, is required to operate in vacuum as
maneuvers are made to meet up with the
mother ship.
While reliable operation is mission criti-
cal, every ounce of weight in a rocket has to
be propelled into orbit by pounds of fuel, as
such the assembly has to be as light at possible
while retaining functional reliability. Based on
NASAs prior experience using space rated
electric motor assemblies provided by Empire
Magnetics Inc., the company was asked to
make proposals for an upgraded system. A
motor with a feedback device is needed to
support a proportional system; however to
provide the torque and reduce the weight a
gear arrangement is required.
To further reduce weight, NASA engi-
neers determined that both O2 and methane
valves would be operated from one actuator,
while the feedback would be driven directly
from the valve shaft. This could be accom-
plished using an offset gear arrangement. The
concept is depicted in Figure 1.
The motor needs to operate for short
periods of time, but because its operating
during flight, the response time must be
quick. We can use the cooling of the liquid
gases to help reduce the motor size, but
have to be careful about thermal shock.

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 30 www.cryogenicsociety.org

Challenges:
Electric motors are complex, composite structures combining
materials with different coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE):
Magnetic iron cant be changed without impacting performance.
Magnet material choices limit magnet type. Copper wire expands
and contracts differently than the base iron and the insulation mate-
rials. And epoxy, varnish and other materials must all be carefully
considered with respect to their changes in dimensions over the tem-
perature range, especially with the great number of thermal cycles
that are expected.

But CTE is only part of the problem. Metals, especially those

that have been machined to shape, have stresses introduced into the
material, thermal cycling causes these stresses to relieve and uncon-
trolled stress relief can result in unpredictable dimensional changes.
To avoid problems it is necessary to rough machine parts to size,
stress relieve the materials and then machine parts to final size. Such
treatment is not typical of mass produced motor products.

While thermal cycling is an issue, the rate of temperature change

or thermal shock is another one. Since epoxy contracts at a faster rate
than magnetic metal, if the rate of change is too rapid the adhesive
bond will break. Reviewing the list of materials in a motor and their
functions, it becomes obvious that elimination of adhesives is not an
option, so the only choice is to limit the rate of change. This is not as
easy as it sounds because if the motor is working hard, the electric
current in the windings is generating heat. Normally to reduce this
thermal shock a designer would choose a larger motor to reduce lo-
calized heating. However, weight constraints push the design in the
opposite direction.

While thermal considerations are important, they are only part

of the problem. Mechanical construction to withstand shock and vi-
bration during launch and landing must be considered. Wires that
can break due to vibration-induced motion must be secured. Much
harder to detect is the presence of micro dents in ball bearings that
can significantly shorten operational life.

Another challenge is lubrication of bearings and gears. Grease

that meets all the requirements has yet to be invented, so we are
left with vapor depositions of dry film lubricants or similar exotic
approaches.

Another issue is insulation on wires and cables. If the wires are

not required to flex when they are cold, then ETFE or Tefzel is often
a NASA choice. Flexible insulators at cryogenic temperatures are not
readily available. We have managed to use ceramic beads on some
test chambers to allow moderate cable flexing. On rockets its best to
avoid this problem.

While there is much knowledge that can be applied to the

problem, given the fact that failure to return our astronauts
after their demanding journey is unacceptable, it will be neces-
sary to build prototypes and devise both tests and test equip-
ment to be 100 percent certain that these critical components
will operate as planned.

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 31 www.cryogenicsociety.org

Artists concept of an atom chip for use by NASAs Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) aboard the International Space Station. CAL will use lasers to cool atoms to
ultracold temperatures. Image: NASA

The Coolest Spot in the Universe

This August, SpaceX CRS-12 will trans-
port the coolest spot in the universe to the
International Space Station, an ice chest-
sized box filled with lasers, a vacuum cham-
ber and an electromagnetic knife used to
cancel out the energy of gas particles, slow-
ing them until theyre almost motionless.

The suite of instruments is called the

Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL). Engineers
at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena CA designed the instrument and
are currently wrapping up the final stages
of assembly.

CAL instruments can freeze gas atoms

to a mere billionth of a degree above ab-
solute zero, more than 100 million times
colder than the depths of space.

Studying these hyper-cold atoms

could reshape our understanding of mat-
ter and the fundamental nature of gravity,
says JPLs Robert Thompson, a CAL project
scientist. The experiments well do with
the Cold Atom Lab will give us insight
into gravity and dark energysome of
the most pervasive forces in the universe.
When atoms are cooled to extreme
JPLs David Aveline and Anita Sengupta are seen with the physics package for the Cold Atom Laboratory, which
includes a vacuum chamber where ultracold quantum gases are made. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech
temperatures, as they will be inside of particles and more like waves. Rows of
CAL, they can form a distinct state of mat- atoms move in concert with one another as
ter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. In if they were riding a moving fabric. These
this state, familiar rules of physics recede mysterious waveforms have never been
and quantum physics begins to take over. seen at temperatures as low as what CAL
Matter can be observed behaving less like will achieve.

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 32 www.cryogenicsociety.org

 NASA has never before created or ob-
served Bose-Einstein condensates in space.
On Earth, the pull of gravity causes atoms
to continually settle towards the ground,
meaning theyre typically only observable
for fractions of a second.
But on the International Space
Station, ultra-cold atoms can hold
their wave-like forms longer while in
freefall. That offers scientists a longer
window to understand physics at its
most basic level. Thompson estimates
that CAL will allow Bose-Einstein con-
densates to be observable for as long as
five to 10 seconds; and future develop-
ment of the technologies used on CAL
could allow them to last for hundreds
of seconds.
Bose-Einstein condensates are a super-
fluid, a kind of fluid with zero viscosity,
where atoms move without friction as if
they were all one, solid substance.
If you had superfluid water and
spun it around in a glass, it would spin
forever, says Anita Sengupta, the CAL
project manager at JPL. Theres no vis-
cosity to slow it down and dissipate the
kinetic energy. If we can better under-
stand the physics of superfluids, we can
possibly learn to use those for more effi-
cient transfer of energy.
Five scientific teams plan to conduct
experiments using the Cold Atom Lab,
among them Eric Cornell of the University
of Colorado and the National Institute
for Standards and Technology, Boulder.
Cornell is one of the Nobel Prize winners
who first created Bose-Einstein condensates
in a lab setting in 1995.
The results of these experiments could
potentially lead to a number of improved
technologies, including sensors, quantum
computers and atomic clocks used in space-
craft navigation.
Especially exciting are applications
related to dark energy detection, according
to Kamal Oudrhiri, the CAL deputy project
manager at JPL. He says that current mod-
els of cosmology divide the universe into
roughly 27 percent dark matter, 68 percent
dark energy and about five percent ordinary
matter. This means that even with all of our
current technologies, we are still blind to 95
percent of the universe. Like a new lens in
Galileos first telescope, the ultra sensitive
cold atoms in the Cold Atom Lab have the
potential to unlock many mysteries beyond
the frontiers of known physics.
The Cold Atom Lab is currently under-
going a testing phase in preparation for de-
livery to Cape Canaveral FL. The tests we
do over the next months on the ground are
critical to ensure we can operate and tune it
remotely while its in space, and ultimately
learn from this rich atomic physics system
for years to come, says Dave Aveline, the
test-bed lead at JPL.

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Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 33 www.cryogenicsociety.org

Nanoparticles Key to Tissue Preservation
A multidisciplinary research team has dis-
covered a groundbreaking process to cool and
rewarm large-scale animal heart valves and
blood vessels preserved at very low tempera-
tures. The discovery could result in a major step
forward in saving millions of human lives by
increasing the availability of organs and tissues
for transplantation, according to John Bischof,
professor of both mechanical and biomedical
engineering at the University of Minnesota, a
past president of the Society for Cryobiology
and senior author of the groups study, pub-
lished in Science Translational Medicine [1].

More than 60 percent of the hearts and

lungs donated for transplantation must be
discarded each year, for example, because
the tissues cannot be kept cool for longer than
four hours. But recent estimates suggest that if
only half of unused organs were successfully
transplanted, transplant waiting lists could be
eliminated within two years.
The new method uses silica-coated iron
oxide nanoparticles dispersed throughout tis-
sue samples within a cryoprotectant solution
applied during the vitrification process. Long-
term preservation methods, like vitrification,
that cool biological samples to an ice-free glassy
state using temperatures between -160 and
-196C, have been around for decades. The big-
gest problem for researchers has been with
the rewarming process, where tissues often
suffer major damage that makes them unus-
able, especially at larger scales.
This is the first time that anyone has been
able to scale up to a larger biological system
and demonstrate successful, fast and uniform
warming of hundreds of degrees Celsius per
minute of preserved tissue without damaging
the tissue, says Bischof. These results are very
exciting and could have a huge societal benefit if
we could someday bank organs for transplant.
Schematic illustrating tissue vitrification, convective warming, and nanowarming. Image: Manuchehrabadi et al.,
Science Translational Medicine (2017)
Bischof says that previous research has
only shown success at about one milliliter
of tissue and solution. The new study, how-
ever, scales up to 50 milliliters, and indicates
there is a strong possibility the team could
scale up to even larger systems, like organs,
according to Bischof.
The researchers used a vitrification so-
lution known as VS55, initially developed
as VS41 by Patrick Mehl in 1993 [2]. Both
Bischof and Kelvin Brockbank, a team mem-
ber from Clemson University and Tissue
Testing Technologies LLC, were familiar
with VS55 prior to the study, having used it
in other experiments in their respective labs.
We stuck with VS55 and found ways
to make it work, says Brockbank. So, in
other words, rather than change the formu-
lation of the solution, we changed how we
deployed it: How many steps did you use?
What temperature was that step performed
at? All of those things can make quite a sig-
nificant difference during both the cooling
phase, the introduction of cryoprotectant
and the removal. And hopefully, if you get
it right, theres no freezing involved at all.
In fact, usually I have to go through every-
bodys manuscript crossing out the word
freezing, because its not a freezing method,
its a vitrification method.
The researchers precooled the VS55
solution to -10C and began introducing it
to harvested tissue at ice temperature. The
sample and solution mix was then cooled to
the low temperatures necessary for vitrifica-
tion. The team used traditional refrigeration
equipment available at both labs and medical
institutions for biomedical storage, cooling
the samples about 10C per minute. The vitri-
fication process essentially takes a liquid to a
point of infinite viscosity. A properly vitrified
sample becomes glassy, brittle in a way but
not cracked or crystallized.

Cracked Crystallized
Vitrified

Conventional convective warming puts cryogenically preserved tissues in danger of becoming cracked or crystallized.
Image: Manuchehrabadi et al., Science Translational Medicine (2017)

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 34 www.cryogenicsociety.org

 With everything were doing here, Moving forward, the team plans to expand References:
were right on the edge of killing the tis- the experiment to rodent organs (such as rat
sue, says Bischof. Youre racing against and rabbit) and then scale up to pig organs and [1] Manuchehrabadi et al., Improved tissue cryo-
time and racing against toxicity with each then, hopefully, human organs. The technology preservation using inductive heating of mag-
one of these steps. And thats what makes it might also be applied beyond cryogenics, in- netic nanoparticles, Science Translational
difficult, challenging. cluding delivering lethal pulses of heat to cancer Medicine.
cells. Weve gone to the limits of what we can
The iron oxide nanoparticles then act do at very high temperatures and very low tem- [2] Mehl, Patrick, Nucleation and Crystal
as tiny heaters around the tissue when they peratures in these different areas, Bischof says. Growth in a Vitrification Solution Tested for
are activated using noninvasive electromag- Usually when you go to the limits, you end up Organ Cryopreservation by Vitrification,
netic waves to rapidly and uniformly warm finding out something new and interesting. Cryobiology. 1993 Oct;30(5):509-518.
tissue at rates 10 to 100 times faster than
previous methods. With convective warm-
ing, for example, the researchers found that
samples warmed unevenly, with tempera-
tures rising much slower in the center of
a sample compared to its edge. And that
leads to two problems, says Bischof. One
is that the rate will be too slow and you will
crystallize and the second is that the differ-
ence in the temperature between the middle
of the system and the edge of the system
will increasingly get larger and larger until
you build up a thermal stress in the system
thats like dropping an ice cube into a glass
of water. Its just gonna crack.

After rewarming the samples and

washing away the iron oxide nanoparticles,
the team tested for viability and found that
none of the tissues displayed signs of harm,
unlike control samples rewarmed slowly
over ice or those using convection warming.

Bischof says the idea for the experi-

ment grew from his teams research in
many different fields to preserve or de-
stroy cells and tissue at either ultrahigh or
ultralow temperatures, but that its success
ultimately resulted from contributions from
an interdisciplinary group of established
and capable researchers from all walks of
complementary science. This isnt just
coming out of my lab, he stresses, its a
very collaborative project. In addition to
Bischof, several experts from the University
of Minnesota contributed to the project,
including postdoctoral researchers Navid
Manuchehrabadi, Zhe Gao, Jin Jin Zhang,
Hattie Ring and Qi Shao; graduate student
Feng Liu; undergraduate student Michael
McDermott; dentistry professor Alex Fok;
radiology professor Michael Garwood, and
chemistry professor Christy Haynes. Other
team members included Brockbank and me-
chanical engineering professor Yoed Rabin
at Carnegie Mellon University.

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 35 www.cryogenicsociety.org

Boundary-Layer Detection in a Cryogenic
Wind Tunnel Using Temperature-Sensitive
Paint Coupled with a Carbon Nanotube
Heating Layer
by Anthony Neal Watkins, anthony.n.watkins@nasa.gov; William E. Lipford, william.e.lipford@nasa.gov; and Kyle Z. Goodman,
kyle.z.goodman@nasa.gov, all NASA
For engineers developing and design-
ing new aerospace vehicle concepts, the
determination of the transition from lami-
nar flow to turbulent flow on an aerody-
namic surface is of vital importance. It can
be critical for accurate drag estimation, for
example, and there are efforts underway to
design wing shapes and vehicle concepts
that can delay this transition for drag reduc-
tion leading to decreased fuel usage.
Current research at NASA Langley
Research Center is focused on developing
a more efficient method for making these
measurements on larger scale models tested
at the National Transonic Facility (NTF)
using Temperature Sensitive Paint (TSP)
combined with a Carbon Nanotube (CNT)-
based heating layer. The NTF is capable of
operating at cryogenic conditions (down to
115 K), providing higher Reynolds num-
ber conditions that most closely resemble
those of flight. In 2008, Dr. Robert Kilgore,
a researcher at NASA Langley and a for-
mer CSA president, wrote a short review
of the history and purpose of the cryogenic
wind tunnel (www.cryogenicsociety.org/
resources/cryo_central/wind_tunnels).
The transition from laminar flow to
turbulent flow is most often indicated by
the temperature difference on the surface
caused by variations in the heat transfer
rates between these flows. And laminar
flow will generally have a lower heat trans-
fer rate to the surface than turbulent flow.
There are several methods for making
these surface temperature measurements.
Unfortunately, at cryogenic conditions these
methods suffer from various disadvantages
that render them of limited use. A viable
alternative is TSP, a method that engineers
have used in cryogenic wind tunnels for
over 20 years. TSP consists of a luminescent
dye that is dispersed within a binder. When
Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2
Figure 1. IR images from a panel painted with a CNT-
based heating layer: (a) No current applied; (b) 70 W
(32 V, 2.2 A); and (c) 385 W (74 V, 5.2 A). Color scale is
temperature K). Image: Watkins et al
36
the TSP coating is illuminated with light of
an appropriate wavelength, the dye in the
binder will luminesce. This luminescence
varies with temperature, and this technol-
ogy has been used in many aerospace and
non-aerospace applications to provide
global surface temperature measurements.
In traditional transition detection
experiments at cryogenic facilities, a tem-
perature step is introduced into the tunnel
to enhance the natural temperature change
due to transition. Depending on flow tem-
perature and local Mach number, this can
be on the order of 0.1 K or less. This step
is usually accomplished by rapidly chang-
ing the liquid nitrogen injection rate into
the tunnel in either a positive (less nitrogen
flow, resulting in a temperature ramp-up)
or a negative (more nitrogen flow, result-
ing in a temperature ramp-down) direction.
While quite effective in increasing the tem-
perature experienced on the model, this can
add a significant cost in terms of data acqui-
sition time and facility operation. There can
also be a significant change in the local flow
conditions during the step.
Researchers have presented recent
work, however, combining TSP with a
CNT-based heating layer that can locally
increase the temperature of the model sur-
face when current is flowed through it. This
method was demonstrated at the German
Aerospace Center, DLR, but the CNT layer
suffered degradation and ceased operat-
ing at 130 K. Researchers at NASA Langley
have extended this operating range with
a CNT-based heater capable of operating
down to at least 77 K.
Verification of the TSP/CNT system was
performed in laboratory testing on several
samples. The process consisted of developing
application techniques to ensure even heating,
as well as determining the CNT survivability
www.cryogenicsociety.org
at cryogenic temperatures. Figure 1 shows
representative heating (imaged using an IR
camera) on a 0.093 m2 plate after applying in-
creasing power to the CNT layer. The heating
is fairly consistent over the surface, though
there is some variation due to slight differ-
ences in application. To test the survivability
of the TSP/CNT system at cryogenic temper-
atures, the NASA team immersed samples in
liquid nitrogen until the temperature equili-
brated to 77 K. The researchers observed no
physical damage to the samples, and the CNT
layer was still functional with no loss of ef-
ficiency.

Once the application techniques were

determined, a panel of approximately the
same size was coated with the TSP/CNT
system and cooled in a large cryogenic
chamber equipped with a window for imag-
ing. The engineers then cooled the chamber
to 110 K (the approximate lower tempera- Figure 2. Temperature measured using TSP and CNT heating layer at 110 K. Image: Watkins et al
ture limit for the NTF) and luminescence
from the TSP was measured as power was
applied to the CNT layer.

Figure 2 contains typical results, show-

ing that the CNT layer is functional with
relatively even heating. Researchers took
these measurements at five distinct spots on
the panel, showing minimal temperature
variation at higher power levels (~200 W) and
measurable changes in the luminescence with
small amounts of power applied (22W). Figure 3. Applying increasing power to the CNT layer: (a) 83 W; (b) 330 W; and (c) 750 W. (inset) photograph of the
HSNLF airfoil coated with the TSP/CNT system. Image: Watkins et al
Final verification of the TSP/CNT
system was performed on a High Speed
Natural Laminar Flow (HSNLF) airfoil
in the NASA Langley 0.3 m Transonic
Cryogenic Tunnel (0.3 m TCT). The 0.3 m
TCT is generally considered a pilot tunnel
for the NTF in which new measurement
techniques and initial vehicle concepts can
be tested before transitioning to the larger
NTF tunnel.

The HSNLF airfoil was constructed
from aluminum with a chord of 0.165 m and
a span of 0.330 m. The upper surface of the
airfoil was coated with the TSP/CNT system
and electrical excitation of the CNT layer was
provided by parallel conductors placed about
12 mm from the end plates. The inset of Figure
3 shows the painted model.
Determination of the transition location
was accomplished by first establishing the
Figure 4. Effect of the method for introduction of the temperature step: (a) CNT heater; (b) fast injection; and (c) slow
injection. Image: Watkins et al
flow inside the test section of the tunnel. Then
a series of images were acquired to collect the
TSP luminescence. After several images are
collected, power is applied to the CNT layer
and the TSP layer is imaged further.
Figure 3 shows results that researchers re-
corded using one of the images acquired with
the CNT layer on and rationing it with one of the
TSP images obtained without power applied to
the CNT layer. The team obtained the images
at a temperature of 200 K and a flow velocity
of Mach 0.7. In these images, the tunnel flow is
left to right. The lighter regions indicate laminar
flow and the darker regions are indicative of
turbulent flow. These X continues on page 38

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 37 www.cryogenicsociety.org

Pulverizing E-waste Is Green and Clean
Researchers at Rice University and
the Indian Institute of Science have an idea
to simplify electronic waste recycling by
crushing it into nanodust.
Specifically, the team wants to make
the particles so small that separating differ-
ent components is relatively simple com-
pared with current processes used to recycle
electronic junk.
Chandra Sekhar Tiwary, a postdoc-
toral researcher at Rice and a researcher at
the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore,
used a low-temperature cryo mill to pulver-
ize electronic waste into particles so small
that they do not contaminate each other. He
focused primarily on the chips, other elec-
tronic components and polymers that make
up printed circuit boards (PCBs).
The waste can then be sorted and re-
used, he says. In every case, the cycle is one
way, and burning or using chemicals takes
a lot of energy while still leaving waste. We
propose a system that breaks all of the com-
ponentsmetals, oxides and polymers
into homogenous powders and makes them
easy to reuse.
Tiwary says the team intends to
replace current processes that involve
dumping outdated electronics into land-
fills, or burning or treating them with
chemicals to recover valuable metals and
alloys, none of which are particularly
friendly to the environment.
The team described its research in a
paper called Electronic waste recycling via
Boundary-Layer Detection... Continued from page 37
images were acquired by applying different
amounts of power to the CNT layer, and even
the lowest power setting (83 W) still shows the
transition location. The team acquired similar
data at various Reynolds number conditions
down to 110 K.
The researchers also compared the
method with traditional temperature step
methods of increasing the liquid nitrogen
injection rate. Figure 4 shows a comparison
of the methods that indicates that the CNT
Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2
Circuit boards from electronics, like computer mice, can be crushed into nanodust by a cryo-mill, according to
researchers at Rice and the Indian Institute of Science. Image: Ajayan Research Group
cryo-milling and nanoparticle beneficiation,
published by Materials Today.
E-waste will grow by 33 percent over
the next four years, according to the team,
and by 2030 will weigh more than a billion
tons. Nearly 80 to 85 percent of often-toxic
e-waste ends up in an incinerator or a land-
fill, Tiwary says, and is the fastest-growing
waste stream in the US, according to the
Environmental Protection Agency.
Scaled-up versions of a cryo mill de-
signed by the Indian team could reduce
those projections. Rather than heating the
waste, the system keeps materials at ul-
tralow temperatures during crushing. Cold
materials are more brittle and easier to pul-
verize, Tiwary says. We take advantage of
the physics. When you heat things, they are
more likely to combine: You can put metals
into polymer, oxides into polymers. Thats
what high-temperature processing is for,
and it makes mixing really easy.
layer provides similar results to tempera-
ture steps produced using both a fast in-
jection rate and a slow injection rate.
However, if the fast injection
method is employed, both the Mach
number and the Reynolds number
change by more than 10 percent. While
this change was not seen using the
CNT heating layer or the slow injection
method, this data could be acquired
in about 10 s with the CNT layer as
38
But in low temperatures, he says, the
materials dont like to mix. The materials
basic propertiestheir elastic modulus,
thermal conductivity and coefficient of
thermal expansionall change. They allow
everything to separate really well.
The test subjects in the experiment were
computer mice, or at least the PCB innards.
The cryo mill contained argon gas and a single
tool-grade steel ball. A steady stream of liquid
nitrogen kept the container at 154 K.
When shaken, the ball smashed the
polymer first and then the metals and the ox-
ides, operating just long enough to separate
the materials into a powder with particles
between 20 and 100 nanometers wide. The
process can take up to three hours, according
to the researchers, after which the particles are
bathed in water to separate them.
Then they can be reused, Tiwary
says. Nothing is wasted.
opposed to more than 30 s with the
slow injection method.
This increase in operating efficiency
could provide a significant savings in tun-
nel operation costs, especially when mov-
ing to the larger NTF facility. Due to the
success of this testing, a series of tests at
the NTF are planned on larger scale mod-
els to gauge the increase in efficiency and
data quality that can be achieved using
the TSP/CNT system.
www.cryogenicsociety.org
 
In Memoriam 
Dr. David Hawksworth
1953-2017
by Graham Gilgrass, Martin Wilson, Craig Marshall
and David Larbalestier

It is with great regret that we report that Dr.

David Hawksworth, former managing director of
Oxford Magnet Technology Ltd., succumbed to
cancer on March 15. He was 63 years old.

In 1976, he completed a summer internship in Martin Wilsons

Group at Rutherford, and that fall became David Larbalestiers first
PhD student at the University of Wisconsin. Under Larbalestier, he
carried out pioneering work to increase the upper critical field of NbTi
and NbTiTa alloys.

Hawksworth joined Oxford Instruments in 1981 as project engineer

for the newly formed NMRI group. He eventually became the managing
director of Oxford Magnet Technology Ltd. (OMT), where he was instru-
mental in leading the team that developed the first high field whole body
1.0T, 1.5T and 4.0T active shield MRI magnets. He was known at OMT
for promoting a culture of quality and best practice, inspiring his team to
be innovative world leaders in the production of cost- and performance-
optimized MRI systems.

During Hawksworths tenure at OMT, the business received sev-

eral Queens Awards, including Technology in 1985, 1991 and 1996,
Export in 1985 and 1991 and Enterprise in 2001. The IEEE Council
on Superconductivity recognized Hawksworths personal contribu-
tions to the superconducting industry by conferring on him its Max
Swerdlow Award at the 24th International Conference on Magnet
Technology (MT24) in 2015. In recent years, Hawksworth served as
an advisor to Tokomak Energy.

Hawksworth was very much a people person, whose passion,

dedication and friendship will be a great loss to his colleagues and
our community. His professional legacy should be thought of not only
in business terms, but also in human terms. He developed several gen-
erations of business leaders both within and beyond superconductiv-
ity, acting as an inspirational role model for how to build and manage
complex teams working on the most demanding problems in a very
cost-competitive market.

He leaves us with many memories of an utterly positive and

ethical engineer and manager who had an unusual empathy for all
who worked with him. For this he will be missed but never forgot-
ten, with so many happy memories and experiences shared. He is
survived by his wife, Judith, and his children Matthew, Rebecca
and Elizabeth. Please visit www.tonksbrothers.com/hawksworth-
david-george/ for information on donations to Hawksworth's fa-
vorite charities.

A special memorial session dedicated to Hawksworth will be held at

MT-25 in Amsterdam at the end of August.

Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2 39 www.cryogenicsociety.org


Short Courses
at CEC/ICMC 2017
Register Early by June 9 for Discount
CSA is offering four short courses at CEC-ICMC 2017 on
Sunday, July 9, 2017. Register online or download the form to fax
your registration at http://2csa.us/sc17.
Full-Day Course
Design of Optimal Helium Refrigeration
and Liquefaction Systems
Instructors: Venkatarao (Rao) Ganni and
Peter Knudsen, Facility for Rare Isotope
BeamsMichigan State University
| 8:00 am-5:00 pm
This short course provides an over-
view of cryogenic refrigeration with an
emphasis on large helium systems used
for particle accelerators.
It includes an introduction to the
pertinent aspects of selected fluid and
material properties; application of the
exergy method; Carnot refrigeration and
liquefaction; ideal cycles and the Carnot-
Step; selected aspects of real cycles and
key components; and floating pressure
process, liquid nitrogen pre-cooling,
helium purification, sub-atmospheric
helium systems, design verification and
lessons learned.
Half-Day Courses
Cryogenic Safety
Instructors: Tom Peterson, SLAC, John
Jurns and John G. Weisend II, European
Spallation Source ERIC | 8:00 am-12:00 pm
The field of cryogenics presents unique
safety hazards. These include issues associ-
ated with:
The extreme cold of cryogenics
Flammability of some cryogenic fluids
(hydrogen, LNG)
Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2
Enhanced combustion associated with the
presence of liquid oxygen
The displacement of oxygen by gases
boiling off from cryogenic liquids (Oxygen
Deficiency Hazards)
The high pressures that can be formed
during the volume expansion that occurs
when a cryogenic fluid becomes a room
temperature gas.
An additional challenge arises from the
behavior of materials at cryogenic tempera-
tures. Many materials are inappropriate for
use in cryogenics and can fail, resulting in
hazardous conditions. Make no mistake,
cryogenics can be hazardous, and injury and
death have occurred in the field of cryogenics.
People affected by cryogenic hazards range
from experts in the field to those who only
use cryogenics peripherally during their day.
Engineers, students, technicians, truck
drivers, scientists, plant workers and medical
professionals are all examples of people who
may be exposed to cryogenic safety issues.
Despite these hazards, work at cryo-
genic temperatures can be performed safely.
Cryogenic safety is well understood and
based on years of experience.
This class is designed to be an introduc-
tion to cryogenic safety for both the expert
and the occasional user. Its structure is
based on example accidents. Each topic is
introduced via one or more accidents. The
broader cryogenic safety topic associated
with the accident is then described, illustrat-
ing how the accident could be prevented.
This approach ties cryogenic safety rules to
the real world and illustrates that accidents
can happen to you. Practical procedures,
40
Dr. Rao Ganni is a
professor in the College of
Engineering at Michigan
State University and the
Director of the Cryogenic
Initiative at the Facility
for Rare Isotope Beams. Ganni has over
36 years of experience in cryogenic
engineering. For 22 of those years he
worked at the Thomas Jefferson National
Accelerator Facility, providing technical
direction for the planning and operation
of the laboratorys several cryogenic 4.5
K and 2 K helium refrigeration plants. He
was also responsible for the labs 12 GeV
cryogenic system design.
John Jurns is lead en-
gineer at the ESS neutron
spallation source project
in Sweden, responsible for
the specification, procure-
ment and installation of a cryogenic helium
refrigeration system. His specific areas of
expertise include familiarity with cryogenic
hydrogen, methane, oxygen, nitrogen and
helium; designing research and prototype
hardware; testing cryogenic systems and
components; heat transfer analysis; aero-
space mission analysis; and developing
cooling systems for large scale particle ac-
celerator facilities.
Dr. Peter Knudsen
is the senior cryogenic
process engineer respon-
sible for designing the
cryogenic systems at the
Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan
State University. His last position was as
a senior staff engineer in the Cryogenic
Group at the Thomas Jefferson National
Accelerator Facility, where he was respon-
sible for detailed process and engineering
design for helium cryogenic systems and
supporting cryogenic plant operations.
Dr. Franklin Miller is
an Assistant Professor of
Mechanical Engineering
and a part of the Cryogenics
Engineering Laboratory
at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. Before joining the
faculty at the University, professor Miller
worked in the Cryogenics Branch at NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center.
www.cryogenicsociety.org
 Tom Peterson
works at the SLAC
National Accelerator
Laboratory. He has over
30 years of experience in
large-scale helium cryo-
genics for particle accelerators and test
facilities. As project engineer for numer-
ous cryostats, cryogenic vessels and cryo-
genic systems, Peterson authored many
safety documents in support of system
operations, including oxygen deficiency
hazards analyses, pressure vessel engi-
neering notes, failure mode and effects
analyses, emergency venting analyses,
relief and rupture disk sizing, etc.
Dr. John Pfotenhauer
has a joint appointment
in the Department of
Mechanical Engineering
and the Department of
Engineering Physics at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison. He joined the Applied
Superconductivity Center at the university
in 1984, directing experiments related to the
stability of He II cooled superconductors,
the design of HTS current leads and devel-
opment of innovative cryocoolers.
Dr. Phil Spoor is a
senior development engi-
neer at Chart Industries,
working on cryocoolers
and technologies in the
energy and biomedical fields. He began his
cryogenics career at Los Alamos National
Laboratory as a post-doctoral researcher
under Greg Swift, working on large pulse-
tube coolers. While at Los Alamos, he also
worked on nonlinear acoustic phenomena
such as mode-locking and the separation of
gases with sound.
Dr. John G. Weisend
II is a Senior Scientist in
the Cryogenics Group of
the European Spallation
Source in Sweden.
Weisend is the Board Chairman of the
Cryogenic Society of America (CSA) and
has led the CSA Short Course Program
since 2001. He is formerly a Professor of
Engineering at Michigan State University,
where he held joint appointments in
Mechanical Engineering and the National
Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory.
Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2
example calculations and references for fur-
ther study are also provided.
Topics covered include:
General Cryogenic Safety and Impact of
Material Choices
Oxygen Deficiency Hazards
Pressure Safety in Cryogenics
Safety in Oxygen Systems
Cryocoolers
Instructor: Phil Spoor, Chart Qdrive
| 8:00 am-12:00 pm
Cryogenics is important in many areas
of science, technology and industry, from
superconductors to surgery. Often, cryo-
genic temperatures are achieved by cooling
directly with (sacrificial) liquid cryogens,
originally produced in massive air separa-
tion plants. More and more, however, cryo-
genic cold is being produced locally with
smaller-scale cryocoolers.
This course will review the history and
basic theory of cryogenics, the main types
of cryocoolers and their relative advan-
tages and disadvantages. State-of-the-art
cryocooling in commercial applications, as
well as new scientific advances, will be dis-
cussed. Particular emphasis will be placed
on pulse-tube coolers and their relationship
to Stirling and GM coolers.
Thermal Properties: Changes
in the Cryogenic Region
Instructors: John Pfotenhauer and Franklin
Miller, University of Wisconsin-Madison |
1:00 p.m. 5:00 p.m
Properties of solids in the cryogenic
regime can be significantly different than
Sunday, July 9, 2017
at Monona Terrace
in Madison, Wisconsin
Register at http://2csa.us/sc17
41
Fees: (in US dollars)
Early Registration
Full Day Course $395/$215 student
1 Half Day Course $230/$130 student
2 Half Day Courses $410/$230 student
Regular Registration
Full-Day Course $430/$215 student
1 Half-Day Course $255/$130 student
2 Half-Day Courses $445/$230 student
Early registration closes June 9, 2017
at room temperature. What kind of differ-
ences do you need to worry about? What
surprises can turn into big problems?
What clever ways can these temperature-
dependent properties be used to advan-
tage? This course will review the behavior
of heat capacity, thermal contraction, ther-
mal conductivity, thermal diffusivity and
contact resistance for many of the solids
typically used in cryogenic systems. In ad-
dition to the fundamental physics behind
their behavior, we will also use a generous
number of examples from past experience
to demonstrate how the properties impact
the design of cryogenic systems.
Cancellation Policy: Registration fees are
non-refundable; however, a substitute reg-
istrant will be accepted.
Early registration closes June 9, 2017.
Regular registration, either online or by
phone/fax, ends July 6, 2017.
On-site registration will be available
on July 9, 2017, for an extra $50; $25 for
students.
www.cryogenicsociety.org
Product Showcase
In the interest of enhancing the value of Cold Facts and helping prospective customers find cryogenic products and services, we offer this
Product Showcase. We invite companies to send us short releases (150 words or fewer) with high resolution JPEGs of their new products.
This editorial feature is open to all companies and related manufacturers.
Air Products
Freshline IQ Freezer
The Freshline IQ system can freeze or chill a broad range of
food products of varying shapes and sizes. It is ideal for meat,
seafood, poultry, fruits, bakery products, prepared meals or spe-
cialty items, and is designed to be easy to clean, allowing you to
switch food products quickly for optimal efficiency.
The Freshline IQ freezer can extract heat from your food
quickly and efficiently.
The cryogenic injection system and the specially designed
internal fans efficiently disperse the vaporized cryogen
throughout the tunnel. This means the shortest possible freezer
for your product; thus no wasted floor space and minimized
operating costs. An optional remote monitoring system allows
the operator or Air Products to track real-time variables, or to
troubleshoot remotely to assure optimization of the system.
www.airproducts.com/food
Intelliconnect Ltd.
Cryogenic Cables
Intelliconnect Ltd, now offers a wide
range of cryogenic cables and components.
These cable assemblies use only the highest
quality materials. The line includes stain-
less steel or niobium titanium cables and
assemblies with bandwidths up to 40GHz,
cupro-nickel cables, raw St/St and NbTi
cables, crimp SMA and 2.9mm connectors,
hermetic connectors, sealed adaptors, at-
tenuators and low temperature hardware.
Intelliconnect cryogenic cables work to low temperature testing, medical and mate-
2 K (-271.15C). Typical applications include rials research.
Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2
Fabrum Solutions
PTC330 Cryocooler
Fabrum Solutions now has
two cryocooler sizes for commer-
cial use, designed with Callaghan
Innovations diaphragm pressure,
wave generator (DPWG) and
Absolut Systems' linear pulse tubes.
The first cooler, denoted PTC330, is
a single in-line pulse tube running
on a 330 cc swept volume DPWG
that produces 480W of cooling
at 77 K. And the second, denoted
PTC1000, combines three in-line pulse tubes on a single 1000 cc
DPWG and is capable of 1300W (over 1500W in cascading mode)
of refrigeration at 77 K with a Carnot efficiency of 15 percent.
In both products, the pulse tubes lack of moving parts com-
bined with the DPWGs ruggedness and mechanical simplicity
have resulted in a cryocooler that is ideally suited to liquefaction
of gases in industrial environments (nitrogen, oxygen, LNG) and
is particularly well suited to applications such as refrigeration
for large high temperature superconductor applications such as
transformers, cables, FCLs and generators/motors.
For more information visit www.fabrumsolutions.com.
Intelliconnect works closely with cus-
tomers to find the optimum solution for
both unique custom designs and high vol-
ume requests. Customers can even specify
their own cable assemblies using an online
cable configurator.
Intelliconnect also has its own brand of
semi-flexible 0.085 and 0.141 cables that
are suitable for industrial, defense, security
and test system applications. These cables
offer a lighter, more flexible alternative to
semi-rigid types, making system assembly
and interconnection easier.
www.intelliconnect.co.uk
42 www.cryogenicsociety.org
 KLAW LNG
CryoDC
KLAW designed its new
CryoDC for quick connect and dis-
connect coupling with no spillage
of product. The system is faster,
safer and more reliable than tradi-
tional methods, meaning operators
require far less training.
This is a major advance on
more traditional methods of con-
necting cryogenic transfer lines,
such as flange connections and
hammer unions/CGA fittings.
Sthr Armaturen
Valve Series 7100
Sthr has expanded its 7100
(BaLANS) high-pressure valve series
featuring bellow sealing for 5.220 psi
(360 bar) medium pressure with a 1.5
(DN40) valve providing a KVS value
of 16 m3/h.
The new valves are built as a
straight-through body type, and are
available for either ambient or cryo-
genic medium temperatures.
Wessington Cryogenics
ISO VAC 20
Wessington designed the ISO
VAC 20 tank as a standard 20-foot
ISO container for the safe storage and
transport of refrigerated liquefied
gases.
It features a new frame arrange-
ment with corner castings and a
lockable valve protection cabinet
that containing the valves, gauges,
vacuum check gauge connection and
a separate document holder.
Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2
The unit is comprised of a tank
and hose unit, and operation entails
a single action using a straightfor-
ward turning motion to connect the
couplings to open the internal valves.
It also requires no special tools or
torque settings.
The CryoDC is designed for a
variety of applications such as bun-
kering, tank storage facilities, refuel-
ing applications, air separation units,
railcars, trucks and ISO tanks. www.
klawlng.com
The valve continues to be avail-
able in .5 (DN10 and 15) and 1
(DN 25) sizes. The design principle
of series 7100 uses two diametrically
opposed bellows which balance
forces during opening and closing.
This allows low forces for op-
eration and makes both manual and
pneumatic actuation possible. In
its product range of high-pressure
valves, Sthr also offers valves from
3.600 psi (250 bar) up to 11.600 psi
(800 bar). www.stoehr-valves.de
The ISO VAC 20 air gas range of
tanks can be produced with working
pressures ranging from 17 to 24 bar,
and can be used for the transport of liq-
uid nitrogen, oxygen and argon. Other
tank options include CO2, LNG, ethyl-
ene and ethane.
The tank has approvals for road,
rail and sea transport; features high
vacuum super-insulation and an in-
tegral pressure-building system, and
can be configured to accept cryogenic
transfer pumps.
www.wessingtoncryogenics.co.uk
43 www.cryogenicsociety.org
 People, Companies in Cryogenics
Alexei Abrikosov, an acclaimed
physicist at the US Department of Energys
Argonne National Laboratory (CSA CSM)
who received the 2003 Nobel Prize in
Physics for his work on superconducting
materials, died on March 29. He was 88.
Alexei Abrikosov. Image: Argonne
In 1952, Abrikosov developed a theory
that showed that magnetic fields could pen-
etrate a superconducting material to create
a network of vortices, while the material
itself remained superconducting.
The discovery of this vortex behav-
iornow known as an Abrikosov vor-
tex latticeallows scientists to develop
superconducting materials that carry
far higher currents and thus are able to
generate much higher magnetic fields.
The theory underlies our understanding
of type-II superconductors, which are
instrumental to technology that affects
virtually all areas of science and life, in-
cluding MRI machines, particle accelera-
tors and cell phone towers.
Dr. Abrikosov was more than a col-
leaguehe was an inspiration and an
exemplar, said Paul K. Kearns, interim
laboratory director at Argonne. All of us
at Argonne aspire to his intellect, to the
perseverance he showed in the face of crit-
icism during his early days as a scientist,
and to the longevity of his accomplished
career. He will be missed and his memory
honored.
Indium Corporation (CSA CSM) has
selected Tim Twining Vice President of
Marketing. Twining has extensive global
sales and marketing experience in
Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2
industrial, business-to-business and man-
ufacturing environments. He has lived
and worked in England, Russia, Singapore
and the US.
Dynavac has hired Dr. Ramya
Chandrasekaran as Director of
Technology. Chandrasekaran earned her
PhD in Electrical Engineering from Boston
University, specializing in epitaxial
growth of wideband-gap materials using
molecular beam epitaxy and fabrication of
optoelectronic devices.
Sumitomo (SHI) Cryogenics of
America, Inc. (CSA CSM), has announced
acquisition of Ferran Technology Inc., a
leading-edge provider of vacuum mea-
surement and control instrumentation
to the microelectronics manufacturing
industry, as well as scientific research
and industrial vacuum markets. The
acquisition of Ferran instrumentation,
according to SHI, allows for expansion
into products that measure and control
the vacuum within the same environ-
ments and markets.
Japans KEK High Energy Accelerator
Research Organization has announced a
worldwide search for its next Director-
General, whose term will begin April 1,
2018, and last for three years. Nominations
should be accompanied by a letter of rec-
ommendation, brief personal history of
the candidate and a list of major achieve-
ments including publications, academic
papers, commendations, membership
on councils, etc. Nominations must be
submitted no later than May 31, 2017, to
Takayuki Sumiyoshi, chair of Director-
General Selection Committee High Energy
Accelerator Research Organization, at
KEK, 1-1 Oho, Tsukuba, Japan 305-0801.
More information is available here:
http://2csa.us/kek.
Oxford Instruments has awarded
Dr. Brad Ramshaw, assistant professor at
Cornell University, its 2017 Lee Osheroff
44
Richardson Science Prize, which promotes
and recognizes the novel work of young
scientists in the fields of low temperatures
or high magnetic fields in the Americas.
The trophy and $8,000 prize were awarded
at the Association for Physical Societys
March Meeting in New Orleans.
Thom Mason has announced he will
step down as director of Oak Ridge
National Laboratory (ORNL) (CSA CSM)
on July 1, 2017, 10 years after first taking
the job. ORNL is the largest science and
energy laboratory in the US, and focuses
Thom Mason. Image: ORNL
on materials, neutron science, energy,
high-performance computing, systems
biology and national security. It operates
two neutron facilitiesthe High Flux
Isotope Reactor and the $1.4bn Spallation
Neutron Sourceas well as two super-
computers. Mason, an experimental con-
densed-matter physicist originally from
Canada, will become senior vice president
for laboratory operations at Battellea
private non-profit science and technology
firm based in Columbus OH, that, with
the University of Tennessee, manages
ORNL for the US Department of Energy.
ORNL is now looking for Masons re-
placement.
Duke University has announced re-
cipients of its 2017 Fritz London Memorial
Prize, choosing Jeevak Parpia of Cornell
University and William P. Halperin and
James A. Sauls, both from Northwestern
University. Awarded every three years,
the London Prize recognizes scientists
who have made outstanding experimental
www.cryogenicsociety.org

and theoretical contributions to the field
of low-temperature physics. Eleven previ-
ous winners have also received the Nobel
Prize in Physics. The 2017 prize will be
presented at the 28th International Low
Temperature Physics Conference, August
9 -16 in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Highview Power Storage, a designer
and developer of large-scale energy stor-
age solutions for utility and distributed
power systems, has agreed to enter ACRE,
New York Citys business incubator for
smart cities, smart grid and clean energy
at the Urban Future Lab located at the
NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
Highview offers a cryogenic energy
storage solution that utilizes the basic
principles of Liquid Air Energy Storage
and draws from established processes
from the turbo-machinery, power genera-
tion and industrial gas sectors. The com-
ponents of Highviews process, according
to the company, can be sourced from large
OEMs and have established lifetimes and
performance levels.
A silicon optical switch developed at
Sandia National Laboratories is the first
to transmit up to 10 gigabits per second
of data at temperatures just a few degrees
above absolute zero. The device, accord-
ing to researchers there, could enable
data transmission for next-generation su-
perconducting computers that store and
process data at cryogenic temperatures.
The LHCb experiment at CERN has
announced the discovery of a new system
of five particles, all in a single analysis.
The particles were found to be in excited
statesa particle state that has a higher
energy than the absolute minimum con-
figuration (or ground state)of a particle
called omega-c-zero.
The discovery, according to CERN,
will contribute to understanding how
the three constituent quarks are bound
inside a baryon and also to probing the
Cold Facts | April 2017 | Volume 33 Number 2
Meetings
& Events
14th Cryogenics IIR International
Conference
May 15-19
Dresden, Germany
http://2csa.us/e9
16th International Superconductive
Electronics Conference
June 12-16
Sorrento, Italy
http://2csa.us/gi
Typical LHCb event. Image: CERN/LCHb Collaboration
27th Space Cryogenics Workshop
correlation between quarks, which plays July 5-7
a key role in describing multiquark states, Oak Brook IL
such as tetraquarks and pentaquarks. www.spacecryogenicsworkshop.org
CSA Short Courses at CEC-ICMC 2017
July 9
The Canadian Museum of Nature, Madison WI
Canadas national museum of natural his- http://2csa.us/sc17
tory and natural sciences, has announced
CEC-ICMC 2017
its largest ever philanthropic gifta $4
July 9-13
million investment from the Ross Beaty Madison WI
family in Vancouver. http://2csa.us/bs
The investment will support a na- ICCE-25
July 16-22
tional cryogenic facility to curate tissue
Rome
samples and genetic material, a post-doc- http://2csa.us/gm
toral fellowship on species at risk, and a
program to digitize the museums exten- 18th International Conference on RF
sive collection of Arctic specimens. All Superconductivity
July 17-21
will be based at the museums national re-
Lanzhou, China
search and collections facility, the Natural http://2csa.us/gt
Heritage Campus, in Gatineau, Quebec.
CRYO 2017
July 20-24
Hefei, China
Cryostar USA has taken over opera-
http://2csa.us/gx
tions of the former Absolute Zero facility
in Aurora IL. The location will continue to 28th International Conference on Low
sell new cryogenic pumps and provide a Temperature Physics
full range of support services. August 9-16
Gothenburg, Sweden
http://2csa.us/fj
In the fall of 2018, the Kelvin, as well Cryogenic Engineering and Safety
as all the other units of the International Course
System of Units, will be redefined to rest August 14-18
Golden, Colorado
on a solid and invariable foundation con-
http://2csa.us/csmcryocourses
sisting of fundamental constants. Kelvin
will be based on the Boltzmann con- 25th International Conference on
stant, which scientists from the National Magnet Technology
Metrology Institute of Germany recently August 27-Sep 1
Amsterdam
determined with a dielectric-constant gas
http://2csa.us/gk
thermometer. The results are available in
the current edition of the specialist journal A full listing of upcoming events is available at
www.cryogenicsociety.org/calendar.
Metrologia.
45 www.cryogenicsociety.org
Index of Advertisers
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Special Lifetime membership: US, $600; outside US, $750.
Cryoconnect. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
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Cryofab, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inside Back Cover
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Eden Cryogenics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

gasworld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Name Title

HPD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Company

International Cryogenics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Address

Janis Research Co., Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 City State/Country Zip + 4

Lake Shore Cryotronics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Email Website

Linde Cryogenics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Inside Back Cover Phone Fax

Magnatrol Valve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 What is your involvement in cryogenics?

Master Bond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Send to:

Oxford Instruments Nanoscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 New Memberships Cryogenic Society of America
218 Lake Street Oak Park IL 60302-2609
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Space Cryogenics Workshop Sponsors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Join CSA online!
SGD, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 http://2csa.us/join
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of America, Inc. 218 Lake Street Oak Park IL 60302-2609
Phone: 708-383-6220 Ext. 302 Fax: 708.383.9337
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A non-profit technical society serving all those interested in any phase
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