Service and our Land Grant Mission

Since 2018 HYPER has made our experimental capabilities available to the public through a fixed rate Service Center. Making these services available to our regional constituents near cost is our way of giving the region a head-start in the nascent hydrogen economy. The Land-Grant mission is predicated on being the grand equalizer between the high-tech urban centers and the rural agrarian lands; to plow new technological ground enabling new forms of commerce. If you’re in the area of hydrogen or cryogenics and don’t want to set up your own research facility, or want to grow the technical expertise your research facility will need, reach out to us. We’re here to help.

Precision Cryogenic Measurements and Calibrations

The HYPER Service Center offers the following routine test capabilities:

• Tensile strength and fatigue testing at temperatures down to 10 K
• Permeability testing of thin-film materials at temperatures down to 10 K
• Catalysis testing for ortho-parahydrogen conversion at temperatures down to 17 K
• Cryogenic thermal conductivity measurements down to 10 K
• Computational heat transfer and thermal fluid modeling

To inquire about a capability and the current backlog contact HYPER Operations Engineer Beadle: zachary.beadle@wsu.edu.

Working with us to Develop New Service Center Capabilities

If you are in need of a testing capability not listed above, we are continually expanding our service offerings and their are many ways to work with us. A common mechanism we use is WSU’s Broad Industrial Partnership Agreement (BIPA). BIPA is for organizations that have not previously partnered with WSU and provides the low 12% overhead rate for projects less than $50k in value. However no IP or other restrictions are allowed. This enables HYPER to develop the new capability, test it with known references, publish a research paper, then complete your proprietary tests via the service center with direct reference to the published capability. Contact Beadle if you are interested in a new capability.

Liquid Hydrogen Safety and Design trainings via the Cool Fuel School

The HYPER Center is proud to offer the “Cool Fuel School” – a week long immersive school on the fundamentals of safely and reliably designing and constructing liquid hydrogen systems. Workshop topics include:

1. The 3-Bs of Cryogen Safety Plans: LN2 vs LH2
2. Conceptual HAZOP and FMEA
3. Valving and Pressure Relief: PRV and Vent Stack design
4. Fittings and Seals: NPT, Compression, Welds/VCR, C-rings, Indium
5. Instrumentation: wiring, thermal wells, heaters, and pressure transducers
6. Practicing the ABCS of thermal contraction
7. Insulations: glass bubbles, aerogel, MLI, and condensed air
8. Leak Detection and Purging: audible, static, bubble, and mass-spectrometer
9. Operational HAZOP and LN2 commissioning
10. LH2 transfers and Troubleshooting

Participants will leave with hardware they designed and assembled that transferred liquid hydrogen. A pre-requisite to the Cool Fuel School will be Professor’s Leachman and Matveev’s graduate level course on Hydrogen Cryogenics utilizing their upcoming textbook “Cool Fuel: The Science and Engineering of Cryogenic Hydrogen.” Contact Beadle for details on course content or to join the waitlist.