Swagelok Northern California Blog

US and international Scientists are acquiring new insights into how high pressures transform hydrogen into a liquid metal by using intense laser pulses to crush deuterium. Were liquid hydrogen ever to become a stable room-temperature superconductor, it would revolutionize the power industry.

A team of Russian and German scientists has devised a system to measure temperatures and magnetic fields at high resolution. They based their system on their finding that the strength of the magnetic field required to elicit a particular quantum mechanical process corresponds to the temperature of the material.

Yet another experiment with graphene—this one testing the behavior of liquid hydrogen, helium and nitrogen near the atom-thin substance—may allow scientists to one day customize nanoscale coatings for wearable electronics and displays.

Our single-handle design can be customized for your particular process needs

Worldwide, a generation of highly trained and experienced technicians is nearing retirement. This leaves plant managers with the challenge of bringing less experienced employees up to speed—before this deep pool of knowledge disappears. Swagelok’s global services team shares three steps for building an effective fluid systems training program.

A team from Rutgers University has fulfilled a 53-year old prediction and created a new class of two-dimensional artificial materials with ferroelectric-like properties at room temperature—that can conduct electricity.

In a step toward preventing engineering failures, a team from Texas A&M University has taken the first 3D image of a microscopic crack propagating through a damaged metal. They have also identified the 10 microscopic structures that can make metals less susceptible to the damage caused by constant exposure to ambient atmospheric hydrogen.

The man who wrote the book on sampling systems has the answers

Researchers from Germany and Sweden have used a powerful X-Ray laser to heat water from room temperature to 100,000 degrees Celsius in less than a millionth of a millionth of a second. In the process they created an exotic form of water that is hotter than the Earth’s core and bears similarities with plasmas found in the sun.

“Dream come true” test results show that it is possible to create superconductors close to room temperature—although it requires pressure 2 million times greater than that at the Earth’s surface.

Engineers in the UK and China have developed a new method, Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT), for measurement of industrial scale gas-liquid mass transfer. It’s simpler than traditional techniques that provide measurements of real-time liquid distribution and local liquid hold-up.

Physicists from the University of Exeter have figured out a way to “funnel” solar energy into an atoms-thick semiconductor chip. They succeeded in converting a far higher percentage of the sun’s power to usable solar energy than traditional techniques. 

How do the methods of increasing purity come into play when orbital welding is used?

At the annual IMEC Technology Forum in mid-August, engineers made the case that Ruthenium is a good candidate for replacing copper wiring, which presents problems with resistivity and electromigration as it is miniaturized for smaller and smaller transistors.

Scientists in China and Canada have discovered a low-cost method of improving the recovery of oil that better controls the hydrodynamic instability referred to as “viscous fingering.”

If unreliable analyzers are plaguing you, we suggest ten steps that will help you improve them. Start with the simplest possible problem, such as an installation issue—maybe you have a fast loop that is flowing backwards, for example.

University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) researchers have developed a technique that answers one question of why lithium-oxygen batteries, which can hold 5 times the power of lithium-ion batteries, tend to die young. If they can figure out how to fix the issue, our smartphones could potentially last for days without charging.