Cryogenic Cutting.

• Autores: Steven Ashley
• Localización: Scientific American, ISSN 0036-8733, Vol. 290, Nº. 3, 2004, págs. 28-28
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Engineers have recently produced an innovative industrial cutting device, the Nitrojet, with Ginsu knife-like capabilities that uses a supersonic stream of high-pressure liquid nitrogen. Nitrojet technology was originally developed in the 1990s by scientists at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL) as a nonthermal method to cut open barrels of combustible waste. Ron Warnecke, president of TRUtech, an Idaho Falls-based firm that handles decontamination and decommissioning efforts for nuclear weapons facilities, stumbled on the still developmental system in the late 1990s when he was searching for an environmentally safe way to clean and cut up plutonium-processing equipment. TRUtech licensed the technology and developed INEL's prototype into a salable product. Warnecke has since set up a new company, NitroCision, to market the device. NASA technicians are now employing a Nitrojet system at the Kennedy Space Center to precisely peel thermal-protection coatings off the inside surfaces of the space shuttle's solid-rocket boosters. Nitrojet systems, which come on skids measuring four feet by four feet by eight feet, start from $200,000 to $300,000 for a lowpressure unit and go to $450,000 for a full system.