Cryocoolers Users and Suppliers Meet in San Diego for a Fourth Industry Assessment Workshop – MCALC IV

by Dayrl Treger

A two-day industry meeting on Military and Commercial Applications for Low-cost Cryocoolers (MCALC) was held in San Diego, CA on November 20th and 21st, 2003. The meeting was sponsored by Strategic Analysis, Inc. (http://www.sainc.com) in cooperation with DARPA, the Army Night Vision Labs (NVESD), and Dr. Martin Nisenoff of Nisenoff and Associates (retired NRL). Attendees included representatives from the U.S. and foreign cooler vendors, users, and integrators, with presentations discussing their cryocooler needs and programs. The continuing objective of this workshop is to perform an industry assessment on the current status of low cost, highly reliable cryocoolers and to estimate the current and perceived needs of the cooled electronic communities. Emphasis is focused on low cost cryocoolers operating in the temperature ranges below 232 K (- 40 C) with attention to the requirements of the user communities on reliability, efficiency, temperature stability, EMI, vibration, audible noise, etc.

My copy of the Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Thermoelectrics: ICT2003 just arrived by mail. If you a attended the conference in La Grande-Motte, France on 17-21 August, 2003 you can expect to receive your copy by mail soon.

If you wish to purchase a copy from IEEE, please visit:
http://www.cpmt.org/proceedings/order.html#ict

The International Thermoelectric Society announces the Goldsmid Award for Excellence in Research in Thermoelectrics by a Graduate Student.

The award is sponsored by Marlow Industries, Inc. and carries a cash prize of one thousand dollars ($1000) and a Descriptive Certificate and will be presented at the Banquet of the 23rd International Conference on Thermoelectrics in Adelaide, Australia.

In addition, the 2004 award will include up to US$1000 for travel and fees related to attending ICT2004 July 25-29 2004 in Adelaide, Australia.

Eligibility:
Ph.D candidate graduate students holding a Master Degree or its equivalent who is actively engage in theoretical, experimental, synthesis or device research in the field of thermoelectrics.

Smalltimes.com is reporting Cool Chips claims of 55% of Carnot efficiency for 'prototypes'.

COOL CHIPS WARMING UP TO INVESTORS FOR FASTER PATH TO MARKET
By Jack Mason
Small Times Correspondent

No details were reported by smalltimes.com and I couldn't find anything on the Cool Chips website, http://www.coolchips.gi. But they are looking to raise US$10M.

IEEE  handles 7 issues: La Grande Motte in 2003; Long Beach in 2002;
    Beijing in 2001; Baltimore in 1999; Nagoya in 1998; Dresden in 1997;  
    Pasadena in 1996.

  To purchase:
     http://shop.ieee.org or http://www.cpmt.org/proceedings/order.html
     Phone +1-800-678-IEEE (toll-free, USA and Canada only)
     Phone  +1-732-981-0060 (world wide).

  Available on-line at a subscribing Unversity/company (PDFs of all papers):
     IEEE XPLORE system: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org
     (ask your university/company librarian for the access password)
     
  More information:
     E-mail: p [dot] wesling [at] ieee [dot] org>p [dot] wesling [at] ieee [dot] org

========================================================
European Thermoelectric Society

8th EUROPEAN WORKSHOP ON THERMOELECTRICS
ETS'04

15-17 September 2004, Krakow (Poland)
=======================================================

Dear Colleagues,

We have a pleasure to inform you that the
8th EUROPEAN WORKSHOP ON THERMOELECTRICS
will be organised in Krakow (Poland), 15-17 September, 2004
by the AGH University of Science and Technology,
Faculty of Material Science and Ceramics &
Faculty of Physics and Nuclear Techniques.

With best regards,

K. Wojciechowski & J. Tobola

PS1 Please, see below for details.

The publisher for tells us the PROCEEDINGS from the 2003 ICT, held last August, 2003 in Hérault. France, is being printed during January 2004, and will be shipped to all paid attendees during February.  If you were NOT in attendance, but would like to get this year's PROCEEDINGS, you can pre-order it from the IEEE and have it delivered with this first shipment.

To order the 2003 ICT Proceedings (and/or any of the other recent years'
books), please see the order form at:
http://www.cpmt.org/proceedings/order.html#ict

The US Department of Energy released the following in a News Article on Nov. 12, 2003:

Advanced Thermoelectric Materials for Efficient Waste Heat Recovery in
Process Industries – PPG Industries, Inc. of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
in collaboration with Visteon Automotive Systems, Owens-Illinois,
Leadbetter, Michigan Technological University, and Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory, will develop high-efficiency thermoelectric energy
conversion materials and technology to recover waste energy from exhaust
gas and other infrastructure heat losses in industrial processing
plants. Significant energy efficiency improvements are expected for
process industries through retrofitting of furnaces with thermoelectric
generators for recovery and reuse of waste heat from melting. DOE will
contribute $1,950,000 of the total project cost of $3,615,000 for the
three-year project. jpattock [at] ppg [dot] com>Joni Pattock (jpattock [at] ppg [dot] com).

http://www.oit.doe.gov/cfm/fullarticle.cfm/id=782

If you've surfed the web, you've probably seen PDF files. The 'Portable Document Format' has become the defacto standard for sharing documents, particularly where formating must be preserved. Here are some comments on where to get the software to read and make your own PDF files.

Adobe invented the PDF (Portable Document Format). PDF files are now widely used. Even the US government posts their tax forms on the web as PDF files. Software to read and create PDF files is available for virtually all operating systems: Windows, Linux, Mac, what have you.