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Design of oil-free simple turbo type 65 K/6 KW helium and neon mixture gas refrigerator for high temperature superconducting power cable cooling AIP Conference Proceedings 613, 893 (2002) ABSTRACTA cryogenic turbo-expander with active magnetic bearings was made and tested in a reverse-Brayton cycle refrigerator using neon as working fluid. Turbine isentropic efficiency is a very important factor for the refrigerator since it affects the performance of the refrigerator significantly. Properties of neon are suitable for the working fluid in a refrigerator to cool HTS (High Temperature Superconducting) applications. The neon refrigerator needs a very small and high speed turbo-expander. But there are few studies of isentropic efficiencies of cryogenic turbo-expander using neon gas. Thus the experiment to get the design information was carried out. A prototype of neon refrigerator was made for HTS applications in 2007. Its cooling power was 2 kW at temperature of 70 K and operated in process pressure between 2 MPa and 1 MPa. To improve the performance of the neon refrigerator, the process pressure was changed to 1 MPa ~ 0.5 MPa. Under this process pressure, isentropic efficiencies for two types of turbine impellers were obtained. The test results were included in to the turbine design program so that we could predict the isentropic efficiencies of the turbo-expander more accurately. Details of the turbo-expander design and test results are described in this report.

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Articles you may be interested inSub-cooled liquid nitrogen cryogenic system with neon turbo-refrigerator for HTS power equipment AIP Conf. ABSTRACTWe consider a sub-cooled liquid nitrogen (LN) circulation system for HTS power equipment. The planned circulation system consists of a sub-cool heat exchanger (subcooler) and a circulation pump. The sub-cooler will be connected to a neon turbo-Brayton cycle refrigerator with a cooling power of 2 kW at 65 K. Sub-cooled LN will be delivered into the sub-cooler by the pump and cooled within it. Sub-cooled LN is adequate fluid for cooling HTS power equipment, because its dielectric strength is high and it supports a large critical current. However, a possibility of LN solidification in the sub-cooler is a considerable issue. The refrigerator will produce cold neon gas of about 60 K, which is lower than the nitrogen freezing temperature of 63 K. Therefore, we designed two-stage heat exchangers which are based on a plate-fin type and a tube-intube type. Process simulations of those heat exchangers indicate that sub-cooled LN is not frozen in either sub-cooler. The plate-fin type sub-cooler is consequently adopted for its reliability and compactness. Furthermore, we found that a cooling system with a Brayton refrigerator has the same total cooling efficiency as a cooling system with a Stirling refrigerator.

Abstract. We developed a prototype sub-cooled liquid nitrogen (LN) circulation system for HTS power equipment. The system consists of a neon turbo-Brayton refrigerator with a LN sub-cooler and LN circulation pump unit. The neon refrigerator has more than 2 kW cooling power at 65 K. The LN sub-cooler is a plate-fin type heat exchanger and is installed in a refrigerator cold box. In order to carry out the system performance tests, a dummy cryostat having an electric heater was set instead of a HTS power equipment. Sub-cooled LN is delivered into the sub-cooler by the LN circulation pump and cooled within it. After the sub-cooler, sub-cooled LN goes out from the cold box to the dummy cryostat, and comes back to the pump unit. The system can control an outlet sub-cooled LN temperature by adjusting refrigerator cooling power. The refrigerator cooling power is automatically controlled by the turbo-compressor rotational speed. In the performance tests, we increased an electric heater power from 200 W to 1300 W abruptly. We confirmed the temperature fluctuation was about ±1 K. We show the cryogenic system details and performance test results in this paper.