On January 23rd, 2020, Thursday, ASHRAE student chapter at UMD hosted a seminar on Cryogenics. This was presented by Prof. Sangkwon Jeong, from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.
‘Cryogenics’ is originated from the Greek word “CRYO”, which means ‘cold’, and the word “GEN”, which means ‘generate’ in English. Nowadays, cryogenics includes all phenomena occurring below approximately -150 C or 120 K, much lower temperature than what we can experience so that it does not seem to be naturally available. There is ample reason for treating cryogenics as a special field even though it is different from other fields just in terms of temperature. The physical properties of materials at very low temperature differ so dramatically from those usually encountered that people cannot just deduce the peculiar characteristic of cryogenics from their general knowledge. Cryogenic engineering is a technology that treats unusual phenomena at low temperature, covering not only physics but also chemistry, biology, mechanics, etc. This talk will introduce several interesting applications of cryogenic engineering that are categorized as superconducting technology, gas separation & liquefaction, and medical applications. They are sometimes invisibly incorporated already in our modern society because various refrigeration techniques have been developed to create such low temperature on earth. Some cryocooler technologies are to be discussed during this talk to show how such low temperature can be obtained in the cryogenic engineering laboratory of KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology).
