He3Pak Specifications...

Description

Helium-3 (³He) is the rare and expensive isotope of helium that is increasingly being used in a number of areas such as fundamental physics, space technology, nuclear fusion and cryogenic engineering, especially in some milliKelvin refrigeration technologies. The normal boiling temperature of ³He is 3.1968 K, becoming superfluid below 0.0026 K (2.6 mK), in marked contrast to the common isotope of helium-4 with a normal boiling temperature of 4.2 K, becoming superfluid below 2.2 K. With appropriate design, use of ³He results in improved efficiency and/or significantly lower refrigeration temperatures. However, in contrast to the widely used HEPAK computer code for ⁴He, no computer codes for ³He thermal properties were available until recently. He3Pak was developed upon published state equations along the vapor-liquid equilibrium line, the liquid-solid equilibrium line, a classical thermodynamic framework and its applications in the normal liquid phase, and a general equation of state based on Debye phonon model.

Availability

This software has an easy-to-use graphical front panel with an electronic user's manual, and provides both a Metric and English unit system. He3Pak is able to calculate thermophysical properties of ³He over a wide range of temperatures from 2.6 mK (the default lower limit value is set as 0.01 K) to 1500 K and pressures up to 20 MPa.

Generally, He3Pak is used as a stand alone executable program. A DLL file is available upon special request utilizing customized development done by the original developers of the He3Pak code, which enables extended programming in applications such as an Excel spreadsheet.