Applications Involving Cryogenic Engineering

In another power generation example, approximately one million dollars worth of liquid nitrogen per year was used to purify the helium coolant used in the High Temperature Gas Cooled fission reactor at the Fort St. Vrain nuclear power plant in Colorado. 

The import and export LNG terminals mentioned require ships with capacities up to 125,000 m (33 million gallons). Several design concepts have been used for ships over 300 m in length and 55 m in width. LNG ship terminals in the U.S. exist in Alaska, Massachusetts, Maryland, Georgia, and Louisiana. 

The domestic satellite LNG facilities mentioned above use extensive trucking. Hundreds of trucks a day are used to safely transport LNG over the highways. 

On the other hand, LNG has been used as a fuel for motor vehicles since the turn of the century. In more recent times, LNG has been used in buses and other fleet-operated vehicles. In addition to LNG, hydrogen is also a good candidate for future use in some fleet motor vehicles and may also find use in electric power generation, aircraft, aerospace systems, and a wide variety of industrial processes. 

Cryogenic applications in the field of aeronautics range from life support and ground research facilities to propulsion systems for aircraft that fly at hypersonic speeds at the fringes of space. Each of these applications is discussed below. 

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Cryogenics is the branch of physics concerned with creation of extremely low temperatures and involves the observation and interpretation of natural phenomena resulting from subjecting various substances to those temperatures. At temperatures near absolute zero, the electric, magnetic, and thermal properties of most substances are gready altered, allowing useful industrial, automotive, engineering, and medical applications. 

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