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Hydrogen Properties for Energy Research (HYPER) Laboratory Cool. Fuel.

Explaining ullage volume collapse

Jim Lovell is famously quoted for saying, “There’s one whole side of that spacecraft missing” after a routine collapse of the liquid oxygen tank ullage volume caused an explosion that infamously rocked Apollo 13. While the explosion was the result of an overpowered motor switch, the ensuing disaster underscores the importance of ullage volume collapse.

Ullage is defined as the volume of vapor above a liquid in a sealed storage tank. Ullage volume collapse is the process of stirring the contents of a cryogenic liquid tank to reduce pressure. That sentence alone should give pause to those of you who have taken thermodynamics.

Not head … » More …

Cryogenic Temperature Sensing

The following introduction to cryogenic temperature sensors is based of LakeShore Cryotronic’s available sensor packages. Much of the information in this post is from their appendices, technical information, and specification pages. General information about the sensors should be accurate for all manufacturers, but specific details about a sensor may not be. For more information, see LakeShore’s website or their Appendix B, D, or E.

Types of cryogenic temperature sensors are as follows:

Diodes: Diodes are semiconductor based temperature sensors … » More …

The HOW of a Hydrogen Organized World

In 1964 Nikolai Kardashev, a Soviet astronomer, postulated a method of measuring a civilization’s level of technological advancement based on energy utilization. The resulting Kardashev scale describes these civilizations (summarized by me):

Type 0– Civilization harnesses organically produced and derived sources (fossil fuels, food, wood, etc.) that exist on scales comparable to individuals and small cultures within the society.
Type 1– Civilization evolves to world level energy produced and derived sources (nuclear, wind, solar, etc.) that exist on scales requiring mass efforts of an entire country and world to achieve. The energy sources have potential to simultaneously move effectively beyond the home planet … » More …

Equations of State

We are building clusters for higher end binary mixture modeling work. A cluster comprises of a series of thermodynamic property models we create, or equations of state (EOS) for a given binary fluid mixture.

Previously completed clusters contain a given fluid mixed with the following: Oxygen, Methane, Ammonia, Water, Ethylene, Ethane, Hydrogen Sulfide, Argon, Propylene, Carbon Dioxide, Propane, Acetone, Butane and Isobutane, Pentane and Isopentane, Benzene, Cyclohexane, Hexane, Toluene, Heptane, Octane, Nonane, Nitrogen, and Decane. It is important to note that a thermodynamic property model can only being created for binary fluid mixtures that contain experimental measurements. Therefore, not all clusters may be comprised of all the … » More …

Vortex Tubes – Cooling without moving parts

The focus of my current research is looking at the possibility of using a vortex tube for efficient cooling of low temperature hydrogen. Our first commercial vortex tubes [1] to be used in testing arrived the other day, so I wanted to post a little demo of how this tech works to separate hot and cold gasses from a pressurized input stream.

 

First, let me give a brief introduction to what happens inside a vortex tube. As you can … » More …

Musings of a Cryogenicist: Day 5 – Vacuum Gauges (everything you wanted to know and more!)

In my last post I talked about the 3 main types of Vacuum gauges available for use. They were:

Force measuring (105 – 10-2 Pa)
Heat transfer (10 – 10-2 Pa)
Electrical charge transfer (ionization) (100 – 10-9 Pa)

I also talked about how I have a FRG-700 Inverted Magnetron Pirani Gauge currently connected to my Cryostat chamber. Well now I want to look at each of these types of vacuum gauges in a little more depth giving the general method of vacuum measurement for each. Understanding how each of these work at a basic level and their limitations can be … » More …

3 wishes for the Cryogenics Society of America (CSA)

The Cryogenics Society of America recently issued a call for “greatest wishes” from members. Here are 3:
1) For the national academies to release a report emphasizing the importance of cryogenics to national security (similar to their report on the need for plasma science). This report needs to emphasize the importance of training engineers with cryogenic design expertise. I keep getting phone calls from companies and labs desperate to hire someone that’s trained and domestic, but have no one to recommend.

2) Small-modular hydrogen liquefaction with efficiency better than 30 % of carnot. This would kick-start the US hydrogen economy, which will almost … » More …

Musings of a Cryogenicist: Day 4 – What’s in a Vacuum?

So what IS in a vacuum? Nothing? Something? Everything?! Well first we need to define what a vacuum is. In day to day life we consider any gas that has less pressure than its surroundings to be in a state of ‘vacuum.’ That doesn’t mean that it has NOTHING in it, it just really means it has less in it. So what’s a good practical example of this? A vacuum cleaner: it produces an area of lower pressure than the surrounding atmosphere giving it the ‘sucking’ capabilities that we use to clear an area of dirt or dust. Now I assume that most people know … » More …

Musings of a Cryogenicist: Day 3 – Interior Components

Alright, so you have a test chamber, you have a vacuum pump (I’ll get more in depth into in a future post), and you have a cryocooler. Now what? Well now we get down to the nitty gritty, now it’s all about designing the experiment itself. First you need to figure out what kind of measurements you need, and what other peripherals are necessary. In my case, so far I have figured that I need thermocouples for temperature measurements and fiber optical cable rated at cryogenic temperatures for my Raman Spectroscopy measurements. I also need some wires to run to my heater so that I … » More …

Musings of a new Cryogenecists: Day 2 – The test chamber

The test chamber may not be the most technically challenging or complicated part of the cryo-design, but it is arguably the most important. Without it, you have no chamber to pull a vacuum on, no enclosed boundaries for your cryocooler to take energy from, and nothing to mount your experiment to. Luckily I am inheriting an already functioning test chamber from Jake Fisher. As I noted in the first post, you must balance time, cost, and ease of design. This means that while I could design a completely new test chamber that fit the specifications for my experiment exactly, … » More …