HYPER lab member Patrick Adam won the Best Poster Award at the 2016 JCATI Symposium. His poster discussed 3-D printing of liquid hydrogen fuel tanks in collaboration with Insitu. Congratulations Patrick!
Finding a way to seal small, mobile molecules such as hydrogen and helium at cryogenic temperatures can be quite difficult. Most common seals break down at such cold temperatures, and even a tiny leak path can be catastrophic when working with flammable gasses and temperatures that can freeze the oxygen right out of the air. Luckily, we have wonder element 49: Indium. High purity indium has a lower melting point, and hardness than lead, making it malleable enough to be an effective sealing material. In addition, at high purities, indium readily pressure welds to itself, and bonds to other metals, glass, and ceramics.
In the … » More …
The helium compressor that drives a cryocooler has to effectively reject the heat it’s removing from the helium stream to prevent itself from overheating, and keep the cryocooler cooling efficiently. In most cases, this means running a heat exchanger with a cooled water loop to keep everything cool. This can be very effective when you’re running high purity, clean water through the heat exchanger, but dirty, rusty, or impure water can reduce performance and foul the heat exchanger tubes. In the lab, we use a cooling loop independent from the building water paired with a water filter to help keep water as clean as possible … » More …
This article was originally drafted as an Op-ed submission for the Seattle Times and included input from many people at WSU. Thank you to all of them for the help:
According to the Washington State Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory, gasoline fueled cars are by far the largest polluter of carbon dioxide in the state of Washington, accounting for one out of every four molecules emitted. If our state is going to reduce carbon emissions, we’re going to need many zero-emission vehicles– and soon.
Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) or hydrogen Fuel-Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs) are the most common zero-emission vehicles. Washington state is making excellent strides … » More …
Two years ago I received seed funding from the WSU Energy Systems Innovation Center (ESIC) to investigate the potential for large scale hydrogen liquefaction in the Pacific Northwest. Since then I’ve had numerous conversations with diverse stakeholders including existing liquid hydrogen producers, program managers in the Department of Energy, Bonneville Power Administration, wind farm operators, chlor-alkali plant operators, bio-mass refiners, bio-fuel producers, and regional fuel cell companies. After two years of considering all of the diverse stakeholders for a system of this size and complexity, an awesome concept for our region has finally emerged. I’ll present this in the following parts: 1) existing North America … » More …
Carl Bunge has set the bar VERY high on entrances to the HYPER lab.
After starting undergraduate research in the lab this last fall as a senior, he just found out he will be awarded a NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship (NSTRF) to begin graduate studies in the Fall of 2016. Carl’s undergraduate work was with HYPER graduate student Ian Richardson, who was the first NSTRF recipient at WSU and has had the fellowship for the last two years. Carl’s research topic will be extension of the Heisenberg Vortex tube for in-space cooling of liquid hydrogen tanks.
The NSTRF is the most prestigious … » More …
Congratulations are in order for HYPER lab undergraduate researcher Kacie Salmon for being the Most Outstanding Sophomore in Mechanical Engineering! Kacie developed the HYPER Games poster from the core lab themes.
DARPA recently released a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA-16-32) titled “Next Generation Social Sciences.” The need to hit the reset button on psychology is partly due to a recent finding that less than half of the research findings are actually reproducible. As stated in the BAA, DARPA:
“is soliciting innovative research proposals to build a new capability (methods, models, tools, and a community of researchers) to perform rigorous, reproducible experimental research at scales necessary to understand emergent properties of human social systems.”
For many of you that read this blog, you’re aware that I regularly dabble in integral psychology through the application of historical meme transitions … » More …
As you likely know, Whitman County (the home of WSU-Pullman) is the Saudi Arabia of wheat. We’ve produced more wheat than any other county in the United States every year since 1978. Of course it helps that we have a land mass equivalent to the state of Delaware and average just 6 residents per square mile.
What you may not know is the considerable potential for hydrogen to fuel these farms. This is a topic we’ll dive into considerable more detail over the coming years. Let’s overview the pieces for now:
Farmers are incredibly familiar with the … » More …
A few years ago I attended a seminar on using extremely long carbon nanotubes for a space elevator. And so I started thinking…
Here’s the wiki for the space elevator concept. Here’s a graphic:
To be clear, space elevators may be harder than controlled thermonuclear fusion to achieve (that’s at least 50 years out). Although carbon nanotubes may have the strength to make it possible, the very best we can do could be ~1m in length. Compare that to the image above and you see how far we have to go. Not to mention running an … » More …