X-Message-Number: 3163
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 94 01:41:18 CDT
From: 
Subject: CRYONICS Magnetic Refrigeration

Andrew J. Clifford, regarding magnetic refrigeration writes:
 
>        Further progress should see the fridges capable of cooling from room 
> temperature to liquid hydrogen.  This has significant implications for 
> cryonics.  Cooling would be simpler, cracking and damaged minimized, and 
> the ultimate storage temperature set at an arbitrary level for optimum 
> results.  The irony is that all those jokes about patients thawing when 
> the electricity is cut off become plausible.  However, a diesel generator 
> or solar panel backup is far easier to arrange than ones own source of 
> liquid nitrogen in an emergency.
 
        There was an extensive discussion of liquid nitrogen (LN2) vs. 
mechanical or thermoelectric refrigeration for storing cryonics 
patients on CryoNet in early 1993.  For a variety of economic and 
possibly biological reasons, -130'C is the temperature at which 
cryonics patients will probably be stored by the end of the decade 
(except for those already in LN2).  This temperature is indeed cheaper 
to maintain mechanically than with LN2 cooling.  The real question is 
whether magnetic refrigerators will be cheaper to buy and operate than 
comparable mechanical units.  Near absolute zero (liquid hydrogen 
temp.) maybe, but -130'C I think not.  The technology is still too 
exotic.
 
                                                --- Brian Wowk

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