SEPTEMBER

Sep 27 Quench Tests of Wendelstein 7X Magnets Complete
Fifty 6-tonne, helium-cooled superconducting magnets provide the magnetic cage of the Wendelstein fusion experiment at the Max Planck Institute of Physics, with another 20 magnets to vary the field. All 70 magnets have now passed quench testing in France.
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Sep 16 Coordination of European Biobanks
Human genetic material and other biological samples are currently stored in a network of repositories throughout Europe. 280 biobanks have apparently expressed interest in a centralised system which would help scientists know what material is held where
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Sep 16 Air Liquide Engineers Come from China & India
Air Liquide's Chief Executive says the French company plans to hire 25,000 employees in the next five years, most of whom will come from emerging markets like China & India, in part due to a skills shortage.
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Sep 16 Jobs on ITER Project
ITER in Cadarache, France and Fusion For Energy in Barcelona are both continuing to recruit. At the time of writing this clip, Fusion for Energy had open positions for Technical Officers for Cryoplant and Fuel Cycle Groups with a closing date of October 2nd.
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Sep 15 Number 1 LNG Supplier by 2020
From 4th in 2009, some are already projecting Australia to become top LNG supplier in the world by 2020, depending on developments in Qatar.
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Sep 14 Gorgon Again - Globally Significant
Hard on the heels of getting the go-ahead for a three-train 15m tonne capacity, Chevron has begun to talk of expansion, with two more trains to take capacity to 25m tonnes pa
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Sep 11 CERN Wants to Buy 30 Cryostats in 2010
CERN's procurement process starts with a Market Survey for which expressions of interest were due in September.
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Sep 9 Frozen Food Specs
The Campden BRI food research association has published new specifications for a variety of frozen foods (broccoli spears; leaf spinach; julienne carrots; sliced onions; diced onions) which can be found at this website :

AUGUST

Aug 26 Hottest Things in Cryogenics
Elsevier list the Top 25 Articles in Cryogenics in the period April to June. BCC Member Dr Adam Woodcraft appears as co-author at number 22 with a paper on proposed designs for a dry dilution refrigerator with a 1K condenser.
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Aug 26 Gargantuan Gorgon LNG
Federal Australian government environmental approval paves the way for Chevron and its partners to go ahead with US$42bn investment in an LNG project expected to deliver 15m tonnes of LNG pa from 3 trains while taking care not to encroach on the local flatback turtle.
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Aug 26 Valve Fault Halts Shuttle
Launch of US shuttle Discovery was postponed for a second time due to malfunction of a valve in the main propulsion system. Part of the cargo is a second MELFI (minus 80 freezer).
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Aug 20 LNG From Pluto
Australia's Woodside Petroleum, part-owned by Shell, is building its sales order book for the Pluto LNG project; with one liquefaction train nearly ¾ complete, design work has commenced on two further trains. Customers include PetroChina and Petronet from India
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Aug 18 GDF Suez in Australian LNG Too
French power utility GDF Suez is investing $370m in Santos' Bonaparte 2m tonne pa LNG project in Australia. The project may use floating LNG technology, with a ship-borne plant to liquefy the gas prior to export to clients in Asia.
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Aug 18 Big Deal in LNG
PetroChina's agreement to purchase 2.25m tonnes of LNG pa from ExxonMobil out of the Gorgon project for the next 20 years should add up to a bill of $41bn at current prices.
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Aug 17 Gorgon LNG Progress
Half with Chevron, and a quarter each owned by Shell & Exxon respectively, this LNG liquefaction project has escalated from A$11 to A$50 billion (!), but is gradually moving forward, with State environmental approval and agreement for storing carbon dioxide
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Aug 17 Cryogenic Tank Engineer
Two German EPC contractors currently seeking two Lead Tank Designers (both Civil & Mechanical) to work on a new LNG Liquefaction project. Apply here

Aug 13 Less Voodoo, More Science
In a laudable endeavour to counter misinformation in the public domain concerning cryogenic treatment, CSA - the Cryogenic Society of America - has launched the Cryogenic Treatment Database as a welcome new resource.
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Aug 11 Sympathetic Cooling in Quantum Computing
Jonathan Home at the US National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST), has taken another step forward in quantum computing research. Cooling two beryllium ions by two magnesium ions is one of the innovations employed by the NIST group.
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Aug 5 Cryogen Free Instruments from Oxford
Oxford Instruments claims to have delivered the world's first integrated Cryofree® dilution refrigerator with a 12T superconducting magnet. Using a pulse tube refrigerator, the system has an ultimate base temperature of 8 mK at zero field. 20 systems have been shipped over the past six months.
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Aug 4 Jigsaw Foods
A Management Buy Out has created this new company which intends to focus on the 'cryogenic' side of its business to expand sales of quick-frozen products.
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Aug 4 Foster Wheeler Engineering Coal Seam Gas
Santos has engaged Foster Wheeler to provide Front End Engineering Design for extraction of Coal Seam Gas to supply an onshore liquefaction facility in Queensland
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Aug 3 Linde Squeeze Out Cash & Profit Despite Difficult Market
For the half year to June, Linde Gases sales dropped over 7%, with operating profit down almost 5%. Margins were up from 25.4 to an eye-popping 26.2% (down to 27.4% in Europe). Linde say they are beginning to see occasional signs of slight recovery in demand.
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JULY

Jul 31 Helpful or Harmful?
The high magnetic fields produced by 'always-on' superconducting MRI magnets may fall foul of new EU legislation concerned with health risks, at anything over 2 Tesla.
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Jul 31 Like Space Without Leaving Earth
NASA operates the world's biggest space simulation chamber for spacecraft at Sandusky Ohio. The 23000 cubic metre volume can accommodate a 270 tonne craft at pressures of 10-7 mbar (using helium cryopumps at 15K) and temperatures as low as -150°C using 1m litres of liquid nitrogen.
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Jul 30 Efimov Trimers at 100nK
A theoretical curiosity for a time after Efimov calculated existence of the condition in 1970, scientists in Italy have now shown how three atoms of Potassium and Rubidium can form bound states after laser and evaporative cooling to create a Bose Einstein condensate at 100nK.
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Jul 29 Wessington Wins
Wessington Cryogenics has been recognised with an Export Achievement Award for international trade to the benefit of the North East. Wessington identified an opportunity for design and build of offshore tanks for the energy industry.
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Jul 27 Agilent to Acquire Varian
$6bn Agilent agreed to buy $1bn Varian for $1.5bn in cash.
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Jul 16 58 Tonnes of Niobium Tin Wire for ITER (9 more added in October)
Oxford Instruments' USA plant has been selected to supply part of the 500 tonnes of superconducting wire needed on the ITER fusion project, in an order worth over $30m placed by ITER's European Procurement Agency (Fusion for Energy) in Barcelona
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Jul 15 LHC Ready for Beam Injection by Mid November
Leaks discovered from the helium circuit into the insulating vacuum in two cold sectors of the LHC have caused two weeks delay while they are warmed up and repaired.
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Jul 9 US Cryogenic Equipment Repair
Chart Industries announced a fourth facility for repair of cryogenic equipment in Reno Nevada. The 40,000 square foot unit is due to be fully operational by Jan 2010.
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Jul 9 Express Delivery of Liquid Cryogens in South Africa
Cryogas Express in Edenvale, Gauteng is now offering to deliver liquid argon, oxygen or nitrogen in South Africa and neighbouring countries.
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Jul 9 Bonn Realise Feyman's Quantum Walk
This story in Physics World starts by trapping a single, cold caesium atom in two optical lattices…
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Jul 3 Happy 50th to Oxford Instruments
Oxford Instruments celebrated its 50th anniversary at Highclere Castle recently. Congratulations to the founders Sir Martin (a Cambridge graduate) and Lady Audrey Wood More detail

Jul 3 Planck Coolest in Space. It's Official
ESA reports that the detectors on the Planck satellite reached their operating temperature of -273.05°C, making them the coldest known objects in space. The low temperatures are necessary to measure temperature across the sky in search of light released after Big Bang.
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Jul 2 Leak Tight Endeavour
Space Shuttle Endeavour has scrubbed two dates in a row for departure to the International Space Station due to leaks of hydrogen gas boiling off from its large liquid fuel tank. Modifications to a seal appear to have cured the problem.
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Jul 2 Oxford Ideas on Cryopreservation
Oxford University, through its ISIS Innovation subsidiary, has a cryopreservation method and cryopreservation media which are the subject of patent applications and are available for commercialisation.
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Jul 1 LPG Accident in Italy
A train derailment and crash resulted in rupture of tanks carrying LPG with an explosion and fire resulting in at least sixteen dead, including three children, and thirty four injured
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MARCH

Mar - Technical Engineering Jobs at ITER
Amongst the open positions on the ITER project at Cadarache in France are a Cryogenic Distribution Engineer, a Cryogenic Process & Integration Technical Engineer, a Cryostat Technical Engineer and Technical Engineers for Integration of In- & Ex-Cryostat Systems
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Mar 28 - Happy 25th Birthday Zoe

Zoe Leyland was the first baby ever born from a frozen embryo.  Born in Melbourne on March 28 1984, the embryo in question was frozen in a controlled rate freezer manufactured in London  by Planer to freezing protocols developed by Professor Pegg of York University
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Mar 23 - Lake Shore Far-Infrared Filters
After thermal cycling down to 4K at Cornell University, Lake Shore Cryotronics announced that its far IR band pass filters have been approved for use on NASA's FORCAST instrument - the infrared camera for the telescope on the SOFIA airborne observatory.
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Mar 20 - First LNG Carrier at South Hook
'Tembek' is the first LNG Carrier to arrive at South Hook, Europe's biggest LNG import terminal at Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire.  Tembek is one of 14 ships in Qatargas 2, a jont venture between Qatar Petroleum, ExxonMobil & Total bringing LNG from Ras Laffan
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Mar 20 - Bringing Biological Samples Home from Space
The freezer on the International Space Station has five months worth of biological samples to come back in cold bags on Discovery, after being transferred as late as possible to avoid letting them overheat. 
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Mar 18 - Cooling Polar Molecules
Hamish Johnston's Physics World Blog on the American Physics Society meeting in Pittsburgh includes discussion of a talk by Silke Ospelkaus from JILA in Boulder CO, on creating an ultracold gas using Feshbach molecules and a 125THz laser, reaching 400nK
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Mar 17 - Daewoo LNG Carrier for Qatargas : 80% More Cargo Than Other Carriers
Built by Daewoo in Korea, Al Samriya is the 7th in a series of fourteen 263,000 cubic metre Q-Max LNG Carriers to be delivered to Qatar Gas for the Qatargas 2 project in which ExxonMobil and Total are partnered with Qatar Petroleum.
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Mar 16 - Linde 2008 Results
CEO Wolfgang Reitzle's statement records continuing growth in sales and profits for 2008 particularly in Asia and Central Europe, and in healthcare or medical gases, but injects some caution & uncertainty in the outlook, citing scenarios for decline as well as growth
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Mar 15 - Qatargas & Shell Sign MoU on LNG Logistics Research
In research to be conducted at the Qatar Science & Technology Park, the two companies aim to develop new ways to optimise expensive LNG supply chains.  Shell is a partner in the Qatargas 4 LNG project and is investing up to $100m over 10 years in technology at the Park.
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Mar 8 - Perennial Planning Problem for Fastest Growing Fuel (LNG)
LNG projects approved in the middle of the decade, particularly in Qatar, are now coming on stream, bringing 30% more supply onto he market, just as European & Asian markets are now expected to shrink by 10%.  Prices in the emerging spot market may fall sharply
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Mar 3 - Linde Begins to Feel Effects of Recession
Linde's Executive Board announced results for 2008.  With a stronger Euro, sales growth was pegged to just under 3% with profits growing over 5%.  CEO Wolfgang Reitzle said they began to feel the effects of global recession at the end of the year
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FEBRUARY

Feb 27 - Whessoe Awarded LNG Terminal Contract by Petronet India
Whessoe, the cryogenic engineering specialist in Darlington dating from 1790, has been awarded a contract to project manage construction of an LNG receiving terminal at Kochi in Southern India, by Petronet LNG, a joint venture with the Indian government
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Feb 27 - BG Jockeying for More Coal Seam Gas
In its third bid in three weeks, BG has increased its offer once more in order to secure Pure Energy in Australia.  Ownership of coal seam gas assets is being consolidated prior to investment in liquefaction facilities intended for supply of energy-hungry Asian markets
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Feb 27 - Sonagas Plans West African LNG Hub
As Europe adjusts to dependence for a quarter of its gas from Russia, Sonagas, the state gas company in Equatorial Guinea, plans to partner with Eon Ruhrgas to create a hub, gathering gas from neighbouring Nigeria and Cameroon, for conversion to LNG for export
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Feb 26 - Next Time You Need To Top Up With Hydrogen in New Jersey
Adding to existing refuelling points in California and Washington DC, BMW is opening a filling station at its US HQ in Woodcliff Lake NJ near New York City to refuel its Hydrogen 7 with liquid hydrogen.
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Feb 24 - Kryooprema Exports from Serbia
Kryooprema has acquired PED and TPED certification, enabling it to become the first firm in Serbia to export cryogenic equipment such as small liquid nitrogen tanks into Europe for use in veterinary applications
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Feb 23 - Sharper MRI Image
Image quality has improved since MRI scanning was introduced in 1977.  A Swiss team has now demonstrated how to produce still clearer images using 7 Tesla compared with normal 3 Tesla machines, though legislation due in 2012 may present a barrier
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Feb 19 - Revolutionary British Propulsion for Skylon Space Plane
Reaction Engines Ltd of Culham in Oxfordshire is developing the hybrid SABRE engine which 'breathes pre-cooled air in the atmosphere, but burns hydrogen fuel with liquid oxygen in space.
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Feb 19 - Cold MOFs in the [Hydrogen] Tank
Researchers at the University of Nottingham working with General Motors claim to have developed a hydrogen fuel tank material (a Metal Organic Framework) which will hold 10% of its weight in hydrogen, under pressure, at a temperature of 77K.
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Feb 18 - BG Bids to be First with a Coal Bed Methane to LNG Project
Having already bought Queensland Gas, BG insists that acquisition of Pure Energy is not essential to justify a new LNG liquefaction plant, but the additional gas would lend more confidence and potential for expansion of a process yet to be proved on large scale.
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Feb 18 - Sainsbury Signs Up for Clean Air
Clean Air Power shares have doubled so far this year.  Sainsbury is the latest to announce it is converting five Mercedes in its fleet of trucks to run on the mixture of LNG and diesel.  CAP has already sold its dual fuel technology to Volvo and Caterpillar.
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Feb 17 - Classifying Superconductors by Type
In condensed matter physics, superconductors are classified as Type 1 or 2 according to their behaviour in an applied magnetic field.  Magnesium diboride, found to be a superconductor in 2001, behaves differently, and iron-based materials may prove similar.
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Feb 17 - Allegations of Bribery in LNG
A report in the Financial Times makes the connection between MW Kellogg and US investigations into bribery on the Bonny Island LNG project in Nigeria, on which Kellogg had $6 billion worth of work.
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Feb 17 - BG Trumps Arrow for Pure Energy
BG looks determined to buy more of the emergent coal bed methane-to-LNG gas industry.  After failing to buy Origin Energy, but succeeding in acquiring Queensland Gas, it is now bidding against Arrow, teamed with Shell, for Pure Energy
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Feb 12 - Oxford Instruments Interim Statement
Reporting on the period from Oct 1 to Feb 12, Oxford Instruments is taking further steps to reduce costs.  By closing sites in Chicago and Denmark, and curtailing R&D in Hyper-polarisation, OI will take a £7.8m charge this year but make savings of £11.4 m next year
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Feb 11 - New INOXAP ASU for SAIL
INOX Air Products has opened a new 1250 ton per day air separation unit at the Bokaro Steel Authority India plant at Jharkhand in Eastern India.  It has storage capacity of 5000 tons of oxygen, 3000 tons of nitrogen and 500 tons of argon
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Feb 10 - Cautiously Optimistic at LHC
CERN's new schedule has protons back in the ring in September, but won't see maximum energy collisions until 2011.  Ongoing repairs include replacing 53 magnets, installing pressure relief valves & new cable.  Two more suspect connections have been identified
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Feb 2 - New Appointment in Cryogenics Industries
James Estes, with the Cryogenic Industries group of companies for 19 years, has been appointed Managing Director of ACD, making cryogenic reciprocating and centrifugal pump and turbo-expander equipment, and the group's global service and repair network
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JANUARY

Jan 29 - Explaining Iron-Arsenide Superconductors
BCS Theory developed in 1957 by John Burdeen, Leon Cooper and Robert Schrieffer explains low temperature superconductors.  It doesn't however explain why superconductivity persists in some cuprates above 100K.  The iron arsenides don't fit either model.
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Jan 27 - What is the Mass of a Neutrino ?
US Physicists have a proposal to find out.  First cool a gas of tritium atoms to within a few millionths of a degree of absolute zero using magnets.  Next trap 10 13 atoms  -  which may take a year.  And then perhaps wait till the German Katrin experiment starts in 2012.
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Jan 27 - Blogs v PR at CERN
Physics World interview with James Gillies, CERN's head of communications, reflecting on a minor cryogenic outage adding drama on Sep 10, and the struggle to manage world thirst for LHC information.  Journalists shouldn't expect ‘first-beam' invitations this year.
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Jan 27 - Common Extensible Cryogenic Engine (CECE)
CECE is a variant of Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne's RL10 engine, used in flight for 46 years, for NASA's Altair lunar lander.  It is a liquid-oxygen, liquid-hydrogen engine with the widest throttle range of any known high performance cryogenic engine.
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Jan 22 - Cryostat for Trinity College Dublin
The Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices at Trinity College in the University of Dublin announced a tender for cryogenic liquid-free cryostat equipment in two lots  -  an mK and a 4K system  -  closing date was March 4th.
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Jan 18 - Cryogenic Role in Spying…
In the 716th Delta launch, a Delta IV heavy launch vehicle, carrying a classified spy satellite for the US National Reconnaissance Office, was powered by three Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne RS-68 engines and one upper stage RL10B-2 cryogenic engine.
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Jan 14 - Gasworld Conference in Santiago
Challenges Facing the Gas Industry in a Region of Opportunity was the theme for the 120 delegates at this event.  Several presentations had a cryogenic theme, Cryo-Bio from Taylor Wharton, Valves from Herose, and LNG from Cryogenic Industries.
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Jan14 - Superfluidity Blog in Physics World
Einstein predicted Bose-Einstein condensation in 1925.  In the 1950s, theorists connected superfluid behaviour to helium-4 below 2K.  A Nobel prize was won after researchers finally created BECs in 1995.  New research may lead to superfluidity at ambient temperature.
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Jan 13 - Largest CO Coldbox Ever Made by Air Products
Air Products has made a CO Coldbox weighing over 300 tons to produce 330,000 tons of CO pa, used in manufacturing acetic acid by Yangzi Petrochemical Corporation in China.
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Jan 8 - Iron Superconductivity Mechanisms
The ISIS neutron scattering facility at the Rutherford Appleton lab is playing a part in revealing clues about the new mechanism of superconductivity being exhibited by iron-based materials at relatively high temperatures.
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Jan 6 - Mixing LNG with Diesel for Volvo Trucks
Clean Air Power, listed on AIM since March 2006, announced a deal with Volvo aimed at making new trucks available with a dual fuel system using a mix of LNG and diesel, cutting costs by 20% and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
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Jan 6 - Frozen Food Favoured in Crunch
With Findus and Birds Eye both in private equity ownership, frozen food may be enjoying gains in times of austerity, as consumers seek cheaper, less wasteful products and are reminded of the core credentials of vitamins in fast frozen peas & omega-3 in fish fingers.
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