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Air Liquide Advanced Technologies Division,ever onward, ever upward!

Air Liquide Advanced Technologies Division,ever onward, ever upward!

www.dta.airliquide.com

Hot NewsLatest news from the DTA

Space AeronauticsDTA expertise

Expert CommentDidier Magnet

P 2, 3

P 4 to 7

P 8

The

ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES

m a g a z i n e o f t h e A d v a n c e d T e c h n o l o g i e s D i v i s i o n

Hot News

2

A high throughput hydrogen purifier for the Italian market

The French synchrotron radiation centre Soleil, near Gif-sur-Yvette (France), has just ordered a cryostat from DTA for the study of samples. The purpose of this cryostat is to operate in an ultrahigh vacuum (i.e. 10-10 millibars), at a temperature of 1.8 K. It has two coils and will be placed in a dual magnetic field: 7 tesla + 2 tesla. “The challenge with this cryostat”, explains François Bonte, project manager at DTA, “relates not only to the extreme operating conditions but also to the fact that the sample holder, at the core of the cryostat is motor-driven to ensure its mobility: it has to be able to swivel 180° and to rise and drop by 30 mm.”The cryostat will be fitted with four windows. The first will receive the synchrotron ray; the three others will be used to examine the sample under observation by spectrometry, photodiode or camera. It is due to be delivered to Orsay/Saclay in the first six months of 2008.“We are currently making a similar

Extreme conditions for moving core cryostats

cryostat for the Italian synchrotron at Trieste”, says François Bonte, “with some differences, compared with the Soleil cryostat, in that it has only one coil and will have to be able to move sideways by 10 mm, as well as moving up and down and in rotation.”

No less than 1,200 Nm3 per hour! This will be the record hydrogen throughput provided by the purifier ordered from DTA by Air Liquide Italie Service (ALIS). The device is to be installed at its plant,

close to the site of the Italian oil group ENI at Sannazzaro, near Milan, and will be used to purify the raw hydrogen generated by ENI, which is supplied to ALIS. The purifier uses the same

technology as the ULTRALs, made for microelectronics companies. The remarkable thing, in the oil industry context, is that the flow of hydrogen supplied is much larger (1,200 Nm3/hr as against 100 Nm3/hr generally for microelectronics).In designing this purifier, DTA also rose to the challenge of making savings on utilities. Indeed, to reduce the consumption of liquid and gaseous nitrogen used in the impurity trapping process, DTA provided a recovery system.

This cryostat has served as a model for the French and Italian synchrotron project systems.

The hydrogen purifier for the Italian market uses the same technology as the ULTRALs, standard gas generators.

From 16 to 20 July 2007, one of the largest international conferences on cryogenics – the CEC (Cryogenic Engineering Conference) - takes place at Chattanooga in Tennessee, in the United States. DTA has never once missed this conference since its inception in 2001.

Seven DTA colleagues, specialists and salespeople in the “advanced cryogenics”, “innovation and superconductivity” and “space” industries, will take part in the CEC.

Thierry Trollier, Pascale Dauguet and Aurélie Caillaud will make five presentations on pulse tube coolers, refrigeration systems for particle accelerators and fusion, and the new range of standard HELIAL liquefiers and refrigerators – an excellent opportunity to share DTA expertise with the delegates attending.

Chattanooga meeting

On the DTA stand at the CEC, Alain Ravex will be one of the DTA staff welcoming visitors.

Hot News

3

Complete defense serviceSIMMAD (Integrated Structure of Maintenance in Operational Condition of Aeronautical Materials of Defense) has just concluded a service contract with DTA of unprecedented scale.It is a three-year contract, with possibility

of renewal, covering the maintenance of all equipment designed and manufactured by Air Liquide for the Ministry of Defense, in other words 50 mobile gaseous nitrogen generators, 5 OBOGS test rigs, 800 sets of underwater breathing apparatus, not to mention liquid oxygen tanks, drain rigs, pressure and vaporization units, etc.“We have always taken care of maintenance for products delivered to the army”, stresses Jean-Yves Perrin, the project manager, “but we used to do it through specific contracts.”Now SIMMAD has decided to put all contracts signed with Air Liquide under one and the same agreement, for reasons of cost and efficiency. “We will be looking after not only our own equipment but also that supplied by the Cryogenic Materials Division and the Group’s Engineering Department.”The contract is unlikely to remain unique for long, since Dassault Aviation has already made provision for the same type of agreement to cover DTA’s OBOGS fitted to the Rafale.

DTA’s 700 bar hydrogen station, which gives greater self-sufficiency to fuel

General Motors commits to hydrogen

cell vehicles, is already meeting with great success: a demonstration on the Champ de Mars for Challenge Bibendum, climate tests in Canada, supplying buses for the Ottawa Senate etc.Now it is the turn of General Motors to order five of these stations from DTA. The carmaker might even order two more in the months to come. These stations are due to come on stream by the end of 2007 to supply the fuel cell vehicle fleet deployed by General Motors in North America.

A HELIAL for Ariane

For its second cryogenic stage, the new generation of Ariane 5 needs significant quantities of helium, and two fixed storage units each containing 100,000 L have now been installed at Kourou by Air Liquide Spatial Guyane, so that an amount of helium sufficient for a launch program is permanently available. Helium is mostly used in the gaseous form to purify, to condition and to pressurize the cryogenic lines on the ground and the rocket tanks, before they are filled with liquid oxygen or hydrogen. But the problem with helium, apart from its unfortunate peculiarity of being highly volatile, is that it is expensive, and getting ever more expensive. It must on no account be wasted – which explains why Arianespace has ordered a HELIAL refrigerator from DTA. “The refrigerator will allow us to recover the cold helium vapors present in the fixed storage units,” explains Stephane Duval of DTA, “so that they can be re-injected in liquid form thereby recovering the precious molecules. It will also play a part in depressurizing the transport containers bringing

the liquid helium and will also reduce the amount of helium lost during ‘container stripping’, between the transport containers and the storage unit.” The HELIAL (and the associated cryogenic lines) is scheduled to be installed at the end of September 2007, for a start-up early in 2008.

Thomas Vinard, of DTA, is filling a General Motors vehicle with hydrogen,

in North America.

DTA will provide maintenance for the mobile gaseous nitrogen generators

it has supplied to the army.

A HELIAL 1000 will go to Kourou in September 2007.

From oxygen, to maintain the normal physiological

functions of pilots, to nitrogen, to inert aircraft fuel

tanks and prevent any risk of explosion…

Newsreport

It was in the mid-1980s that demands were first heard for on-board gas

generating systems, and, as is often the case with the Aeronautics industry, the first equipment developed by Air Liquide DTA was for defense applications. This was true for the OBOGS prototype which flew for the first time on a Mirage 2000 in 1989, before being selected by Dassault the following year to equip the Rafale (first flight in 1993). It was true for the OBIGGS with its first customer, Eurocopter, back in 1991, who wanted to fit it to the German Tiger.But Civil Aviation gradually declared its interest and today many programs are benefiting from developments related to these systems - for example the Air

The Aeronautics market reaches Expansion

Liquide OBOGS is an option on the A380; some versions of the A319 are fitted with an oxygen regulator, and Air Liquide will supply the membranes for the OBIGGS systems on the new versions of B737 and B747.

In the Aeronautics team at Air Liquide’s Sassenage site there are currently some 60 people, a third of them working exclusively on development. “We are working for the generations to come” as Richard Zapata, the team leader likes to say. In fact, an Aeronautics program more often than translates into 5 to 10 years in development, 30 years in production and 20 in operation, with everything that might be imagined

in terms of spare parts and m a i n t e n a n c e services. The commercial s p i n - o f f s i n relation to OBOGS a n d O B I G G S a re constant l y e v o l v i n g , especially as their involvement in civil aircraft depends o n s t a t u t o r y obligations which, if they do arise, cannot fail to stimulate a still emerging market. Confidence is high in the defense market (see box

p. 5) since, for all new programs, Air Liquide DTA is much in demand from manufacturers for its expertise and the solutions it can provide. “The Aeronautics sector is benefiting from the technological breakthroughs we first developed for industry” states Richard Zapata. “When we were contacted early in the 1980s by aircraft manufacturers, the strategy we adopted was to adapt products already in use by industry, to ‘aeronautize’ them, if I can put it that way, in other words to modify them so they could be built-in at the aircraft design stage, while complying with aeronautical specifications.” Plainly this meant prototypes, and lengthy testing of endurance, vibrations and electromagnetic compatibility. At Sassenage, the experts involved – such as Didier Gaget or Olivier Vandroux – are keen to stress the extent of the technological change experienced at DTA. Change came also from the fact that, right from the start of the venture, the site opted for an approach that was proportionate to the system. It ruled out straightaway the idea of designing a set of additional equipment. Even though the OBOGS (1) and the OBIGGS (2) have components in common relating to gas separation, controls, filtration, all these technologies developed for aeronautics were designed to meet specific needs. Some allowance did have to be made in fact for constraints relating to the space envelope, which must be minimal in an aircraft, or to the actual nature of the assignments given to pilots of fighter

4

Qualification test of the OBIGGS for the Indian ALH.

In Bangalore, testing the OBIGGS built into the ALH helicopter. On the left: Krishna Murthy, Project Manager for HAL; next to him, for DTA, Marc Roybon (Test Technician) and François Saclier (Project Manager); and next to them, Nagesh Hebbar (Technical Director), R. Rajendran (Support Engineer), and other members of the HAL team.

The Aeronautics market reaches

the on-board gas generating systems designed

by Air Liquide DTA have contributed to air transport

safety for 20 years.

Newsreport

aircrafts, cargo aircrafts, or even helicopters.

The presence in the Air Liquide group of other entities such as MEDAL, an American subsidiary of Air Liquide, which designs manufactures and sells membranes, is not extraneous to the “vision system” developed by DTA. It means that a comprehensive (inerting) function can be marketed through an integrated component supply even including the tanks. Nonetheless, this overall approach is not incompatible with satisfying

maturity

5

specific demands as is shown by the success achieved by the SCP (Services Connection Package) – the oxygen and anti-G regulator – with Honeywell for the American F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.At Sassenage, apart from oxygen and nitrogen, we also like to dream of being able to incorporate other gas generation systems. Developments currently underway in hydrogen energy for the ground transportation sector – particularly fuel cells – will

also one day find aeronautical applications…

(1) OBOGS: On-Board Oxygen Generating

System.

(2) OBIGGS: On-Board Inert Gas Generating

System.

Contact: richard.zapata@airliquide.com

Air Liquide OBOGS

In all, 15 programs are currently involved, which over a 20 year period

will mean the delivery of several thousand pieces of equipment. For the

complete system (oxygen concentrator, analyzer, regulator and emergency

oxygen cylinder): the Rafale developed by Dassault; the Italian M346

developed by Aermacchi; the L159, another training aircraft but a Czech

one, produced by Aero Vodochody; the KT-1, Korean Trainer One made by

the Korean Aerospace Industry; the Cougar Horizon helicopter produced

by Eurocopter. Other noteworthy references are the F-35 Joint Strike

Fighter with Honeywell Aeronautic Yeovil approving with Lockheed Martin

the choice of SCP for the survival equipment (LSS); the A400M cargo

aircraft for which Airbus has selected the DTA concentrator and analyzer.

Air Liquide OBIGGS

Over a thousand on-board nitrogen generating systems will be delivered

by Air Liquide over the next few years. For the complete system: the Tiger

(German version) produced by Eurocopter; the ALH produced by HAL in

Bangalore (India); the C27J made by Alenia (Italy); the C295 developed by

EADS-CASA (Madrid); the Czech L159, the only airplane fitted with both

an OBOGS and an OBIGGS from Air Liquide. The OBIGGS analyzer was

also selected by Boeing for the C17.

Adjustment of the oxygen and anti-G regulator for the JSF – F-35.

The C27J cargo aircraft

designed by Alenia.

The ALH (Advanced Light

Helicopter) designed and developed by Hindustan

Aeronautics Ltd.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

tactical aircraft.

Air Liquide, a new market appeared at the outset of the 1990s: orbital Systems. And, with the Melfi, Planck and Herschel programs, the DTA teams proved their ability to design and manufacture cryogenic equipment that can guarantee the operation of satellites or equipment for periods of time possibly running to several years.

Aboard the international space station the cooling of the Melfi refrigerated laboratory (1) on 19 July 2006 is a recent example of success. Based on the equipment, the Turbo Brayton technology implemented by DTA was found on a first prototype as early as 1995. For Planck and Herschel - the infrared observation satellites which will be launched in 2008 – DTA has already delivered the refrigerating facilities. They will enable scientists to make their observations in optimum conditions. As Pierre Crespi himself admits: “For Herschel, we produced a superfluid helium

cryostat, fairly similar to the ones we usually make. Conversely, for Planck, the challenge seemed insurmountable. To begin with, nobody believed in it… but we made it, in partnership with the CNR S low-temperature laboratory.” In fact, operating a cooler at 0.1 K, for two years, in weightlessness, and therefore without the gravity needed to separate the normal helium from its helium 3 isotope, was part of the challenge…

A s early as 1962, the creation of an Advanced Technology

Division expressed the will of the Air Liquide group to have a centre specializing in cryogenics and open to multiple applications particularly in the space area… 45 years later, the team led by Pierre Crespi can already count over 150 cryogenic tanks that have “gone into space”. For him, in a market that requires so much work being done so far ahead, the ESCA stage of the Ariane 5 launcher is already almost a matter of history… “With support from the CNES, we are now developing solutions which will enable us to design a new launcher for operation by 2015,” he explains.It’s a fact: the current market satisf ies the placing into geostationary orbit of two satellites with the total maximum mass of 9.5 tonnes, but the launcher of tomorrow will be required to deal with other masses and to aim for other destinations. Well ahead of this deadline, DTA is working on a demonstrator that can validate the feasibility of a cryogenic stage with ballistic phase and re-ignitable engine… indeed, some missions will one day require the engine to be stopped, and then re-ignited. But, in a state of weightlessness, the cryogenic fluid may well disperse, or even evaporate, which explains why some innovative projects are currently underway at Sassenage, on isolation and microgravity, in order to keep the fluid at the bottom of the tank.

Launchers for Ariane 4 and 5 are no longer today the sole purpose of the research programs developed at Sassenage for the space industry. Indeed, in response to a desire to diversify the applications arising out of technologies mastered by

Ever onward in innovation and conquest

6

Technical

Ariane, Melfi, Planck, Herschel… no lack of Air Liquide DTA references in the space industry. But today, new development projects are underway

Launchers and orbital Systems

In the Destiny module of the ISS orbital station, the astronaut Jeffrey N.Williams puts biological samples into the Melfi refrigerated laboratory.

Launching Ariane 4 May 2007.

Behind the scenes at Kourou

Personal account by Sophie Quemerais, 28

years of age, launcher systems engineer,

on an assistance mission on 4 May 2007 to

Kourou, during the launch by

Arianespace of the Astra 1L.

and Galaxy 17 satellites.

The main purpose of

my mission is to provide

support for any decision

that may need to be taken

in the event of a technical

problem arising during the

final launch phase. Any

help I offer will of course

be provided in conjunction with

partners from Astrium, Arianespace

or the CNES. My presence aims to

guarantee that everything happens in

a standardized way for the equipment

supplied. I know the operational

limits of the tanks in the environment

for which they were approved, and

I try to predict how they will behave

in unexpected circumstances. If a

discrepancy is noted relative to the

established criteria, the process may

be interrupted so that a solution can

be found, but fortunately, the launches

go off most of the time without a

hitch. There is therefore also a second

purpose for my presence on the spot,

namely a technological watch. From my

contacts, I gather certain information

about the launcher, the operational

constraints, equipment accessibility,

and the resources available. It is vital

for us to become familiar with all this

information if we are to develop our

own projects better.

and tests have already been carried out with some customers. It represents a break from the “unitary product” culture, and opens up the perspective of a manufacturing in an almost standardized way. “It is often said that the hardest thing is to reproduce performance,” stresses Pierre Crespi. “The example of Ariane proves that we can do it, and we will do it for pulsed gas tubes. We have faith in them, just as we have faith that we will soon emerge from the narrow framework of cryogenics to offer solutions in gas engineering as well”. And, why not,

towards the planet Mars…

(1) Melfi: Minus Eighty

Degrees Laboratory

Freezer for the ISS.

For further information,

read the article set

out on page 8 of

Cryoscope no. 36.

(2) 3rd generation

Sentinel, Meteostat,

Helios, etc.

Contact:pierre.crespi@airliquide.com

Ever onward in innovation and conquest

7

But we had to get over this stage to analyze fossil radiation and determine the age of the universe.With a new generation of satellites already being programmed (2), Air Liquide DTA has now found a niche with an original solution, namely pulsed gas tubes. This technology is easier to control than the Stirling thermodynamic cycle, and it has other advantages as well, in that it is light, it has a smaller consumption of electricity, much reduced vibration and is easy for the project manager to integrate. We have confidence in our pulsed gas tubes

Technical

beyond cryogenics and around solutions close to industrialization.

The DTA-designed 0.1 K dilution cooler for the Planck satellite.

In the DTA workshops, the superfluid helium cryostat tank for the Herschel satellite.

DTA is part of a large gas group and yet your site is better known for its other areas of competence. How do you explain this?DTA was set up by Air Liquide 45 years ago, to expand its research into cryogenics as the Cryogenics Research Centre. It was founded close to the Grenoble scientific community, particularly the CEA and the CNRS, with which we still collaborate closely today. Subsequently Air Liquide

entrusted DTA with the mission to expand the Group’s know-how in environments with strong technological content, and that is what we do, in our customers’ areas of excellence, namely aeronautics, space, hydrogen energy, microelectronics, particle physics and

A panel of expertise on a common base of knowledge and know-how

Within Air Liquide, the Advanced Technology Division has a very special position,

distinguishing it from the Group’s main area of specialization, which is the

production of industrial and medical gases. Cryogenics? Aeronautics? Space?

Cars? Energy? Basic research? Microelectronics?... how can the people at DTA

serve such varied sectors of expertise? Didier Magnet, site Director, reveals just

far DTA know-how can stretch.

EXPERT CommENT

so on. But all our expertise rests on the same competence base, in cryogenics and gases. In fact, DTA bases its growth on the expansion of areas of dual expertise, such as cryogenics and space, gas and aeronautics…

Who exactly are your colleagues who do this “double hatting”?All our people are passionate about what they do, and the adventures and challenges in which DTA gets involved are their lifeblood. They come from very varied backgrounds and it is this diversity that makes our site so rich. Some of them are skilled in the Group’s areas of expertise, but are also trained in the areas of expertise of DTA’s customers. Others have been recruited in our customers’ sector. With us, they learn the specifications of cryogenics. As such, the career path of one of our colleagues – Jean-Michel Cazenave – will serve as an example. Previously he worked for a famous aircraft manufacturer, but today he has reached one of the highest grades of expertise at Air Liquide.

Can you quote any examples of DTA products adapted from Air Liquide technologies?The list is a long one. I will restrict myself to two examples. Firstly in Aeronautics. The OBOGS, created for defense aircraft, is an on-board oxygen generator that uses the same

air separation technology as that used by the Group for supplying oxygen to electric metallurgical furnaces. To design it, we built into the process the specific constraints of the field in which the product was to be used, namely miniaturization – the dimensions of a generator for two pilots has nothing in common with those for a facility intended for the production of thousands of tons of steel – ultra lightness, resistance of a defense aircraft under flight conditions, statutory requirements etc.Here’s another example- from the space industry this time. The cryogenic tanks for the Ariane rocket were developed from knowledge acquired by Air Liquide in cryogenic storage units and the semi-trailers which transport the fluids sold by the Group. For Ariane, DTA developed a special isolation technology, reduced drastically the thickness of the tank walls to gain weight, while guaranteeing that they could withstand vibrations and other stresses sustained during takeoff. This experience acquired in the space industry is taking us today into the car making sector and enabling us to offer cryogenic tanks with exceptional performance for tomorrow’s vehicles which will run on hydrogen…Our thorough knowledge of our customer’s businesses in fact gives us the know how to adapt our technologies to their needs.

Contact: didier.magnet@airliquide.com

Air Liquide’s experience in relation to storage was used in the design of the

cryogenic tanks for the Ariane rocket, enabling an ultra-flat tank to be developed

for the hydrogen cars of the future.

The Cryoscope is published by the Air Liquide Advanced Technologies Division • BP 15 • 38360 Sassenage • Tel. : +33 (0)4 76 43 62 11 • Fax : +33 (0)4 76 43 62 71 • E.mail: gcom.dta@airliquide.com • Director of Publication: Didier Magnet • Coordination: Sébastien Lefèvre • Delegate Publishers: 2ème Communication - Groupe Publicis • 22, rue Seguin • 69286 Lyon Cedex 02 • Tel. +33 (0)4 72 41 64 84 • Photos: Aermacchi, Airbus, Airbus Military, Air Liquide,Boeing, Cryospace, Dassault, Finmeccanica, Lockheed Martin Corporation, David Marshall, NASA, ESA-CNES-Arianespace, DR • Printing: Imprimerie Lamazière • 165, avenue Franklin-Roosevelt • 69153 Décines • ISSN 1270-4369 Copyright deposited • June 2007.

ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES