Revolutionary cryo-cooling technology reduces time to near absolute zero by 70% | Cryogenic equipment

A new method to improve cryogenic coolers can reach near-zero temperatures up to 3.5 times faster, or using about 71% less energy compared to existing technologies.

Developed by a team of researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States, the new method can be used for cryopreservation of biological tissues, embryos, eggs and sperm.

Cryogenic cooling is also used in the operation of particle accelerators at CERN. The weeks-long process involves cryo-cooling technology that lowers the temperature of the helium to 80K (-193C), then to 4.5K (-268C), before it is injected into the magnets and cooled to 1.9K (-271C).

The technology is also used in engineering projects, magnetic lifting systems and to aid deep space exploration where it cools scientific instruments inside the James Webb Space Telescope to suppress background noise infrared.

At extremely low temperatures, superfluidity allows liquids like helium to flow without resistance and climb the walls of containers, while superconductivity allows electrical currents to pass through materials without any resistance.

As temperatures approach absolute zero, quantum events slow down, creating Bose-Einstein condensates in which atoms behave as one, forming “super-atoms.”

However, getting close to absolute zero is expensive and slow. For over 40 years, the pulsed tube refrigerator (PTR) has been the leading technology to achieve 4K.

“Today's commercial PTRs are set only to operate at their base temperature, resulting in low cooling rates and wasted compressor power,” the researchers said.

The team developed analytics to help optimize PTRs based on temperature, which led to the discovery that the buffer tubes of modern PTRs need to be redesigned for the refrigerator to use all the energy their compressors can produce .

Highlighting the inefficiency of PTR at room temperature (where cooling begins), the researchers improved efficiency by redesigning the connections between the compressor and refrigerator and adjusting the valves to remain open initially before to close gradually.

This led to 50-75% faster cooling without wasting helium.

According to the researchers, their prototype – once commercialized – could save around 27 million watts of energy each year, $30 million in global electricity consumption and enough cooling water to fill 5,000 Olympic swimming pools .