Why are safety reliefs installed on all cryogenic liquid oxygen, nitrogen, argon
or carbon dioxide fill hoses?
Safeties are not only installed on fill hoses. They are also installed on any cryogenic line that
is sealed on both sides. This is because cryogenic liquid trapped in a line will vaporize and
expand exponentially, creating tremendous pressure in hoses, piping or tubing. This
expanding liquid nitrogen, oxygen, argon, or CO2 can easily build enough pressure to cause
the line or hose to explode with great force.
This is a danger that is easily overlooked and one that is not obvious to someone without
prior knowledge or training.
Whether you are filling medical oxygen bases, transferring liquid from one DOT4 vessel to
another, or otherwise filling from a bulk source, it is essential to have a relief for expanding
vapor.
Never forget to be sure the hose you are using to fill has a properly rated safety relief
installed somewhere between the valves or other connections that could trap liquid!
http://cryonews.blogspot.com/
Clarence Birdseye
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Designer of freezing equipment, father of frozen food industry in US
1912-15, field naturalist for US Biological Survey in Canada, saw Eskimos
place fresh fish on ice, expose to wind, freeze solid. Fish thawed and eaten
much later retained all fresh characteristics (flesh quality, taste)
Realized flash freezing prevented formation of large crystals, no damage to
cellular structure of food
Worked to perfect freezing methods from 1917 - 1925
Patent for wax-packing dressed foods in cartons were frozen between two
flat refrigerated surfaces under pressure
1930 First retail sale of frozen foods, Springfield MA
Contracted production of retail display
units for grocery stores
Held 300 patents
•Invented by Donald Glaser in 1952
•Glaser won the Nobel Prize in Physics for this in 1960
•Glaser was POSSIBLY inspired by bubbles in beer
•Vessel filled with a clear , superheated liquid
•Normally filled with Liquid Hydrogen because of its simplicity
and low interference with the high-energy process being studied
•Used to detect electrically charged particles
•The device uses a piston in a chamber to decrease pressure resulting in
bubbles forming. The bubble density is proportional to a particle’s energy loss.
•Chamber is in a magnetic field to force the charged
particles to move in a helical path.
•Led to the discovery of weak neutral current, establishing the
electroweak theory
•Being replaced by wire chambers and spark chambers.
Sources:
Cryogenic Engineering Text Book
Wikipedia
Ted Williams
The infamous baseball player died on July 5,
2002. Although his will stated that he wanted
to be cremated, his children decided to have
him cryogenically frozen at Alcor, a crogenics
facility.
Since this time, there has been much
controversy over this decision to cryogenically
freeze Williams, including a lawsuit by the
other siblings, and stories of his frozen head
being damaged during a handling process.
Celebrities use the technology of cryogenics
to suspend their bodies and cells with the
possibility of someday being unfrozen and
capable of living on.
Daniel Amariutei, PHY 6555C, HW1: Lowest temperatures achieved, pK-range.
2003: 500pK
MIT team headed by Nobel laureate
Wolfgang Ketterle, has cooled a sodium
gas to 500 picokelvin using lasers and a
novel way of confining atoms, which
they call a "gravito-magnetic trap" - the
magnetic fields act together with
gravitational forces to keep the atoms
trapped.
A view into the vacuum chamber where sodium atoms were cooled.
2008: 100pK
Helsinki University of Technology,
YKI-group of the Low Temperature
Laboratory has cooled a rhodium sample
to 100 picokelvin using an apparatus
consisting of several consecutive cooling
stages.
The central part is dilution refrigerator
reaching a temperature of 3 mK, and two
nuclear cooling stages utilizing the
method of adiabatic nuclear
demagnetization (first nuclear stage
cools to 50mK and the second nuclear
stage cools in the pK range).
September 2003 – MIT Team
Achieves Lowest Temperature –
500 pK
• Accomplished by Dr. Wolfgang Ketterle, who
discovered Bose-Einstein Condenstate in 1995, and
Dr. David Pritchard both from MIT
• Cooled sodium gas to 500pK, 6 times lower than the
previous record
• Used the same process to cool the atoms that led to
the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics shared by Ketterle
and his colleagues Drs. Eric Cornell and Carl
Wieman from the University of Colorado
• To contain the gas, they invented a novel way of
confining atoms they termed a “gravito-magnetic
trap,” using magnetic fields in conjunction with
gravitational forces to contain them
Source: http://cua.mit.edu/ketterle_group/Press/press_picokelvin/Universe%20Today%20-%20Coldest%20Temperature%20Ever%20Created.pdf
Low Temperature Record Reached in 2003
Wolfgang Ketterle and colleagues at MIT have
succeeded in cooling a Bose condensate of sodium
atoms down to a low temperature six times lower
than the previous record for Bose condensates.
The lowest temperature the team measured was
450 pK.1
As of November 2000, temperatures below 100 pK
were reported at the Helsinki University of
Technology. However this was the temperature of
nuclear-spin.2
4.5×10-10
1.
2.
A Leanhardt et al. 2003 Science 301 1513;
http://ltl.tkk.fi/wiki/LTL/World_record_in_low_temperatures.
Coldest Temperature in Nature
Observed
• 2003
• The Boomerang Nebula
• 1K (-272 degrees C)
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http://www.esa.int/esaSC/Pr_1_2003_h_en.html
Direct Observation of Fermionic
Condensates (2003)
Using K-40 atoms
−8 and Fesbach Resonance
at a T of 5×10 K the first true
observation of a fermionic Condensate
Deborah S. Jin
Left: Public Domain picture from http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/jin.htm
Right: False-color snapshots of a growing fermionic condensate. Copyright Markus Greiner.
Adiabatic Demagnetization Refrigerator
(ADR)
--Developed by Dr. Peter Shirron at NASA
--A solid state refrigerator that uses magnetism to achieve
temperatures far below 2K.
Changes in the angular momentum of the magnetic
“refrigerant’s” electrons result from manipulation of an external
magnetic field, and cause the material to store or release heat by
changing the system’s entropy.
--Applications in space/astronomy
Because of the ability to reach very low temperatures, and the fact
that it does not rely on gravity to operate (like a dilution refrigerator
does).
See:
http://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/5331?start=3
Technology originally discovered in the 1990s to aid in the safety of opening contaminant barrels. It was made available in 2003 to scientists as a product under the name Nitrojet-­‐ licensed in 2001. USES: • Variable temperature and pressure of LN stream cuts allows cutting through “difficult” material-­‐ such as steel and concrete • Cleans and decontaminates industrial and radioactive material. • Inert LN sprays into a gas a distance of 18” before being absorbed by the atmosphere All information and photos taken from http://www.nitrocision.com/ • Pressure ranges: 6000 – 55,000 psi • Temp ranges: 100 to -­‐240 F • Flow rate: 1 – 8 GOM (total • Power req: 480 V, 3 phase, 150 KVA Supersolid
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In 2004 Moses Chan
observed a separation
of solid helium from its
container.
Here is the test mass
containing the
'supersolid'
When spun, not all the
mass is given a
rotational velocity.
Staring in 2001, the non-profit Alcor
Life Extension Foundation had
performed ice-free preservation of
the brain (ice damage was well
known and a problem), using a
process known as vitrification,
essentially an antifreeze application
for organic materials.
However, in 2005, Alcor extended
this process from just the isolated
brain to the brain inside the head of
a subject while still attached to the
body. The result was a vitrification
of the brain and a “conventional”
cryo-preservation of the body.
It is hoped from this that the next
step is full vitrification of the entire
body.
This large Dewar is designed to preserve
four bodies and six brains.
*http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/newtechnology.html
Cryopreservation
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Goal: Reduce temperature of tissue below point of biological activity
Desired temperature is below glass transition point of water (-136 Celsius)
Glass transition/Vitrification: Occurs upon very rapid cooling; forms
amorphous ice (glassine structure, no crystalization)
Crystalization is undesirable because of the subcellular damage that crystals
can cause (esp. crushing/rupturing cell membrane)
For vitrification, cooling must be very rapid
Minimum cooling rate increases with viscosity, depression of freezing
temperature
Common fix: introduce cryoprotectant (similar to anti-freeze)
Most common cryoprotectant: Dimethyl sulfoxide (toxic)
Current cryopreservation research focused on finding appropriate
cryoprotectant
To attain vitrification of pure water, necessary cooling rate estimated to be on
the order of 10^6 Kelvin per second, thought impossible until 2005 research
by Bhat, Sharma, and Bhat.
Researchers that water is capable of undergoing the glass transition in bulk.
Researchers exposed capillaries of water to liquid Helium (4.2K)
Resulting amorphous ice was examined and confirmed with Spin Probe
Electron Spin Resonance (ESR)
Top picture: damaged brain tissue caused by ice crystal formation (white
structure is a damaged capillary, black spot is a nucleus sans cell membrane
Bottom picture: micro-formation of damaging ice crystals
Iron‐based Superconductor
• Discovered in 2006 and 2008;
• Ferropnictides, based on the iron‐pnictogen
(typically arsenic) layers (Cuprates are based on layers of copper and oxygen);
• With alkaline earth metal being substituted by rare earth metal, Critical Temperature may be higher than 40K (39K is the McMillan limit predicted by BCS theory);
• Tc may increase under high pressure;
• Some types may have very high upper critical field (Hc ~ 50‐100T)
Superinsulators
• In 2008, physicists found that under certain conditions,
metals cooled to temperatures near absolute zero will
form superinsulators rather than superconductors.
• Compound used and observed was titanium nitride film
placed in a magnetic field.
• “Vinokur points out that a superinsulator material could
be used to encapsulate a superconducting wire. Such a
coupling would create an almost perfect wire in which
virtually no energy is lost as heat.”
Cryogenics as a Coolant: Cooling the
The LHC uses liquid helium [in its
LHC
superfluid stage around 1.9 K]
Though cryogenic techniques
represent an obvious method
of cooling, they have never
been used to cool anything
on the scale of CERN's Large
Hadron Collider (LHC).
Source: University College London, <http:
//www.hep.ucl.ac.uk/undergradprojects/3rdyear/PPguide/cool.htm>
This is used to keep the coppershelled niobium-titanium magnetic
coils that serve as magnets in a
superconducting state
The use of superfluid helium allows
for "kilowatts of refrigeration to be
transported over more than a
kilometer with a temperature drop
of less than 0.1 K."
During the initial cooldown (from
ambient temperature to
superconducting temperature), over
12 million liters of liquid nitrogen
will be used.
The total amount of liquid helium
stored for use in the LHC is 700,000
liters.
Use of cryogenics at the
Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave (GW) Observatory (LIGO)
The LIGO detector is designed to measure gravitational radiation in the
frequency range from 10Hz – 1kHz.
4km Laser Interferometer:
To achieve the necessary sensitivity to see GW, LIGO must measures
the distance between the mirrors to within an accuracy of 1 attometer
(10-18 m)
Cryogenic cooling of the mirrors:
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reduces thermal noise
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reduces thermal lensing
Science run 6 (S6) began on July 7, 2009
For more Information, refer to:
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0264-9381/19/7/412/q207b2.pdf?request-id=f10ce0f3-0319-4042-b502-f3b7f6785de4
Shawn Mitryk - Cyrogenics
Cryogenics Breakthrough Event
 Bose-Einstein condensate of strontium produced for
first time (2009)
Scientists from the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information
produced a Bose-Einstein condensate of the alkaline-earth element strontium.
Key to the discovery was the scientists’ choice of 84Sr, an isotope that is not
as abundant in nature as other strontium isotope candidates like 86Sr and
88Sr. Their research showed that the 84Sr isotope had an ideal scattering
length for producing a Bose-Einstein condensate. In experiments where
strontium atoms were cooled to near absolute zero in a optical trap, a BoseEinstein condensate of 150,000 atoms was produced.
Mariugenia Salas (UFID 9629-0158)
Planck instruments’ reach coldest known
temperature in outer space
July 3, 2009 – Planck’s High Frequency Instruments reached an operational temperature of 0.1 K, said to be the coldest
temperature in outer space. Planck detectors are equipped with three cryogenic, cooling systems (final-stage cooling by a
0.1 K dilution system) working in succession to lower the operational temperature from 45 K to 0.1 K.
(Left: Spacecraft’s three “V-groove”-panels for thermally isolating the payload from high temperatures and improve in
radiating excess heat. Right: Planck’s Low and High Frequency Instruments (LFI and HFI) spacecraft used for imaging the
sky in six frequency channels between 100 and 857 GHz.)
Source Article- http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=45133
Left Image- http://planck.cf.ac.uk/files/images/09Feb2009-3120_L.jpg_0.jpeg
Right Image- http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/images/planck3.jpg
Cryogenic Testing of NASA Space Telescope
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On April 9, 2009, parts of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) successfully endured cryogenic
testing at an X-Ray and Cryogenic facility at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
The JWST represents a new era is deep space telescopes: it is far larger and lighter per sq. meter than
Hubble and will be kept at cryogenic temperatures by blocking solar radiation and being sent ~ 1 million
miles from Earth. This will allow for infrared images of space without interference from infrared radiation
from the telescope itself.
Cryogenic testing of all telescope parts is necessary to insure functionality of the instrument in the near
absolute zero temperatures of space. The mirror segments are composed of beryllium as it is a nonmagnetic metal that doesn't distort significantly over a wide range of temperatures.
One of the 18 mirrors was cooled to 25 K in a vacuum chamber cooled via liquid helium in order to asses
the contraction and expansion of the mirror components as the temperature varied. Accounting for such
unexpected changes during temperature fluctuations is imperative for images to be rendered correctly.
The measurements were made using a laser interferometer
The cooling and reheating process is repeated four times over a six week period. Due to the large size of
the vacuum chamber (7,6000 cubic feet), it takes a few days for the liquid helium to cool the chamber to
25 K
Full testing of all 18 mirrors is expected to be completed by mid 2011.
JWST compared to Hubble
Maureen Petterson, Cryogenics, Spring 2010
First Bose-Einstein Condensation of
Strontium
•November 2009
• Achieved by scientists from
the Institute of Quantum
Optics and Quantum
Information (IQOQI)
•Key: Used 84Sr, instead of
naturally abundant 86Sr and
88Sr
•Precision measurements
among the applications
Scientist from IQOQI in Innsbruck
won the race to produce BoseEinstein condensation of Sr.
http://www.physorg.com/news176994672.html
Article can be found at http://physics.aps.org/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.200401.pdf
Reported: (5/27/2009)
New Method to Trap Atoms on a Chip
“Atom chips” allow for the study of ultra cold atomic gasses at
temperatures just above absolute zero.
New method involves capturing cold atoms directly onto the atom
chips from a room temperature gas of rubidium.
Trapping the atoms is the integration of magneto-optical traps,
which come from pyramid-shaped structures etched into a silicon
wafer.
The new technique is fairly simple
compared to existing atom
trapping methods and is the first
observation of direct cold atom
trapping from a background vapor
inside a micro fabricated structure
on an atom chip.
Example of Atom Chips
CDMS
Cryogenic Dark Matter Search
Located at Berkeley, there is an experiment that just
finished running which uses super-cooled germanium
and silicon crystals to try to find WIMPs, Weakly
Interacting Massive Particles, which may be the
answer to current issues about ‘dark matter.’ As the
earth sweeps through the so-called dark matter halo
of the Milky Way, the flux of WIMPs is detected by
measuring the increase in internal energy of the
germanium.
Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS)
Corey Mahoney
The CDMS scans space for WIMP (weakly
interacting massive particle) dark matter from
deep underground in Minnesota. A detector of
geranium and a detector of silicon are cooled to
milliKelvin temperatures using a dilution
refrigerator. The extremely low temperatures
limit thermal noise which could obscure the
necessary phonon signals from particle
interactions. Despite being in operation since
2002, on December 17th, 2009, the collaboration
working on CDMS announced the possible
descoveries of two WIMP dark matter particles.
THE EXPERIMENT
THE DISCOVERY
The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) is a
series of experiments designed to directly detect
particle dark matter in the form of WIMP’s. Using
an array of semiconductor detectors at millikelvin
temperatures, CDMS has set the most sensitive
limits to date on the interactions of WIMP dark
matter with terrestrial materials. The first
experiment, CDMSI, was run in a tunnel under the
Stanford University campus. The current
experiment, CDMSII, is located deep underground
in the Soudan Mine in Minnesota.
On Dec. 17, 2009, the CDMSII announced that it
had detected two pulses which were possible
WIMP candidates (one on August 8 and the other
on October 27, 2007). Two events were
detected that were similar to the properties
expected for a Dark Matter particle.
However, due to the low number of events,
the team could not statistically support
these detections as true WIMPs since they
may have been false positive from
background noise such as neutron
collisions. The low number of events leaves
things in doubt, though, and the experimenters
themselves estimate that there's a 25% chance
that the pulses were caused by background
radiation, such as those from neutrino collision.
Experiments are continuing in an attempt to
detect more such pulses, so that it can be
determined exactly what their source is.
THE DETECTORS
CDMS detectors are disks of germanium or silicon,
cooled to millikelvin temperatures by a dilution
refrigerator. The extremely low temperatures are
needed to limit thermal noise which would
otherwise obscure the phonon signals of particle
interactions. Phonon detection is accomplished
with superconduction transition edge sensors
(TESs) read out by SQUID amplifiers, while
ionization signals are read out using an FET
amplifier.
Close-up of a CDMS detector,
made of crystal germanium
References:
-About.com:Physics. CDMS experiment.
-Wikipedia.com. Cryogenic Dark Matter Search.
-Fermilab
Pedro J. Mora
Cryogenics
HW #1
Cryogenic Dark Matter Search
• Collaboration amongst
universities to detect
dark matter by using
germanium and silicon
detectors cooled to
superconductivity.
• An increase in resistance
(Temperature) would be
seen when the dark
matter interacts with the
detectors
CDMSII Detectors using Cryogenic
Techniques
• Detect WIMPS
through weak phonon
signals in detector’s
crystal
• Cooled to 10mK to
minimize spurious
thermal signals
• Testing employs
helium3-helium4
dilution refrigerator
techniques
Magnetism in Gases
ƒ After cooling lithium atoms to 150 billionth of 1 K above absolute zero , researchers at MIT observed ferromagnetic behavior in the gas, suggesting that a gas of elementary particles doesn’t always need a crystalline structure to exhibit magnetism.
ƒ There is ongoing research in this topic. Small blob of lithium‐6 gas, chilled ultracold.
ƒ Method: Researchers used a laser light trap to chill lithium. After the atom’s repulsive forces were increased, ferromagnetism was observed.
Sources: http://futurity.org/science‐technology/at‐extremes‐hot‐and‐cold‐act‐oddly‐alike/
http://www.cryogenicsociety.org/magnetism_observed_in_a_gas/#more‐4435
Magnetism observed in Gas?
• "Itinerant Ferromagnetism in a Fermi Gas of Ultracold Atoms,"
Gyu-Boong Jo, Wolfgang Ketterle, et al., Science, Sept. 18,
2009
• A research team at MIT observed ferromagnetic behavior in a
gas of lithium-6 isotopes cooled to 150 billionth of 1 Kelvin.
• The team trapped the cooled gas in the focus of a infrared
laser beam and made several observations which agreed with
the theoretical predictions.
• If confirmed, this result provides insight into the question of
whether or not a crystalline structure is needed for
ferromagnetism.
• http://web.mit.edu/press/2009/gas-magnetism.html