Given the theme of this issue of Cold Facts, Stirling Cryogenics would like to take you on a tour of our 70-year history, telling about our recent and vintage cryogenerators and systems all around the world. Universities worldwide have been our customers from the very beginning, cheering in the 1950s that they could now produce their own LN2. In South America, proud examples include systems at the Universidad de Chile since 1964 and IVIC in Venezuela where the old Philips Cryogenerator was replaced with a new system after 45 years of operation. The University of Buenos Aires in Argentina has several systems in operation of which the oldest cryogenerator was installed in 1958 providing 66 years of service!
A high-level LN2 system worth mentioning is the one installed at Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) of ESO at Paranal in the Atacama Desert in Chile, at an altitude of 2635 meters above sea level.
Moving from South America to Africa, here the two main types of applications are the preservation of biological materials and production of fruit juices and water. Throughout Africa there are institutes that carry out research on viruses, for example, which are preserved in LN2. As these often are in remote locations, they depend on Stirling LN2 generators.
Renowned beverage companies making drinks often use Stirling systems to provide LN2 for their nitrodosers, injecting a drop of liquid nitrogen into a bottle of juice, water or oil. The rapidly evaporating liquid nitrogen will disperse the oxygen from the bottle, extending its shelf life without preservatives and increasing compressive strength of bottles required during packaging and transportation.
Crossing the Middle East with many systems at universities, we land in India. Beyond a large number of closed loop cooling systems in many of India’s renowned science and technical institutes and universities, India is also home to a large number of LN2 systems for artificial insemination. These are used to preserve semen for breeding livestock and assuring milk production, for which many centers are in the countryside.
India is by far the country with the largest number of Stirling systems, many of which date back to the 1990s and are still in operation, for example systems at IIT Kharagpur installed in 1994 and at NEHU where our LN2 system was installed in 1999.
Moving further east, we find again more systems for AI all over Asia and closed loop systems for superconductivity in Korea and Japan. Crossing the ocean brings us to North America. Here too we have LN2 systems at universities in the US and a large customer base concentrated in the east of Canada.
With numerous scientific institutes and innovative companies, closed loop systems can be found in many of the states. Our deepest system is at the Sanford Underground Research Facility, located at a depth of 1,500 meters in South-Dakota. Aiming higher are our systems supporting space research at NASA and Georgia Tech. Another application which we support widely is superconductivity, with 25 K systems at CAPS in Florida and ComEd in Chicago for their HTS cable in use since 2021.
If we cross the Atlantic again, we come close to home with the 22 K GHe loop cooling system for the Reactor Institute Delft in the Netherlands, making sure their neutron moderator existing of a bath of LH2 will always be kept at the right pressure.
Similar systems are being built to cool superconducting electric motors that are now under development in Europe, paving the way for carbon-free and sustainable aviation.
Sustainability is a relatively new but growing market which is supported by Stirling, providing cryogenerators and systems to convert bio-mass into bio-LNG, which can be used as a CO2 neutral fuel for trucks. By the end of 2024, the collective of our LNG liquefiers across Europe will be producing over 150 tonnes per day of bio-LNG, replacing diesel and fossil LNG, with more projects being developed in the coming years.
The latest application we support is the emerging market of liquid hydrogen, providing systems to produce LH2 on site, as well as manage boiloff by reliquefaction, for which in fact we have been building cryogenerators since the late 1960s.
In the spirit of “Cryogenics around the World,” the final application we would like to showcase is our seaworthy version of cryogenerators for reliquefaction of LNG on ships, as these quite literally move around the world.
We at Stirling Cryogenics hope this tale of the use of cryogenics and cryogenerators around the world and through time has given you an insight into Stirling’s past, present and future. Obviously not all systems and applications have been mentioned. For any inquiries on these or other possibilities, please contact us. www.stirlingcryogenics.com
Image: Stirling Cryogenics' dedicated team at Hysytech's 20th anniversary and inauguration of its new headquarters in Orbassano, Italy. Credit: Stirling
Image: Onsite liquid nitrogen for storage and preserving semen for artificial insemination. Credit: Stirling
Image: Stirling Cryogenics liquid nitrogen system at Universidad de Buenos Aires - Argentine dated 1958. Credit: Stirling
