• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.41-46
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• 2015

Recently, the development of the HTS power cable is actively promoted. As the length of HTS power cable increases, there have been many efforts to develop large capacity cryocooler. Among the various cryocooler, the Brayton refrigerator is the most competitive for HTS power cable. The Brayton refrigerator is composed of recuperative heat exchangers, a compressor, and a cryogenic turbo expander. In these components, the cryogenic turbo expander is a part to decrease the temperature and it is the most significant component that is closely related with overall system efficiency. It rotates with high speed using a high-pressure helium or neon gas at cryogenic temperature. This paper describes the design of a 10 kW class Brayton refrigeration cycle and the cryogenic turbo expander. Flow and structural analysis are performed for the rotating impeller and nozzle to verify the efficiency and the design performance.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.129-135
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• 2016

There have been many types of development and commercialization efforts for superconducting power applications with the continuous development of High Temperature Superconducting (HTS) conductors. In particular, HTS power cables are going to be commercialized in real power grids. A cryogenic refrigeration system should be used to keep it below 77 K, and its required cooling capacity continuously increases as the unit length of the HTS power cable increases. Among the many kinds of cryogenic refrigerator, a reverse Brayton refrigerator that uses turbo expanders is a promising refrigerator due to its efficiency and reliability. Among the various components in refrigerators, the cryogenic turbo-expander is the most important part for increasing efficiency and assuring reliability. The design of a 300 W class turbo-expander is described in this paper prior to the development of a 10 kW class turbo expander, which is the required capability for the commercialization of a HTS power cable. The impeller shape and rotation speed are determined based on the cycle analysis. The Eigen frequency and harmonic analysis are conducted with gas bearings at cryogenic temperatures to determine the operational stability.

• KEPCO Journal on Electric Power and Energy
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.299-305
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• 2016

The High Temperature Superconducting power cables (HTS power cables) become increasingly longer to commercialize the HTS power cable system. Accordingly, demands on refrigerators of large cooling capacity per a unit system have been increased. In Korea, it is currently imported from abroad with the high price due to insufficient domestic technologies. In order to commercialize the HTS power cables, it is necessary to develop the refrigerators with large cooling capacity. The Brayton refrigerators are composed of recuperative heat exchangers, compressors and cryogenic turbo expanders. The most directly considering the efficiency of the Brayton refrigerator, it depends on performance of the cryogenic turbo expander. Rotating at high speed in cryogenic temperature, the cryogenic turbo expanders lower temperature by expanding high pressure of a helium or neon gas. In this paper, the reverse Brayton cycle is designed and the cryogenic turbo expander is designed in accordance with the thermodynamic cycle.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.141-148
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• 2015

The cryogenic cooling system should maintain the HTS power cable below 77 K. As the length of HTS power cables has increased, there have been many efforts to develop large capacity cryocoolers. Brayton, Joule-Thomson, and Claude refrigerators were considered for the large capacity cryocooler. Among the various cryocoolers, the Brayton refrigerator is the most competitive in terms of the HTS power cable. At present, it is thought that a 10-kW class refrigerator will be able to be used as a unit cooling system for the commercialization of HTS power cables in the near future. The Brayton refrigerator is composed of recuperative heat exchangers, a compressor, and a cryogenic turbo expander. Among the various components, the cryogenic turbo expander is the part that decreases the temperature, and it is the most significant component that is closely related with overall system efficiency. It rotates at high speed using high-pressure helium or neon gas at cryogenic temperatures. This paper describes the design of a 300-W class Brayton refrigeration cycle and the cryogenic turbo expander as a downscale model for the practical 10-kW class cycle. Flow and structural analyses are performed on the rotating impeller and nozzle to verify the efficiency and the design performance.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.40-44
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• 2020

This paper describes the real operation of 2 kW class reverse-Brayton refrigeration system with neon as a working fluid. The refrigeration cycle is designed with operating pressure of 0.5 and 1.0 MPa at low and high pressure side, respectively. Compressor package consists of several helium scroll compressors witch are originally used for driving GM cryocooler. Three segments of plate heat exchanger are adopted to cover the wide temperature range and the refrigeration power is produced by turbo expander. The developed refrigeration system is successfully operated at its target temperature of 77 K. In experiments, all parameters such as pressure, temperature, mass flow rate and valve opening are measured to investigate characteristics during cool-down process and normal state. The difference between design and real operation is discussed with measured experimental data. At normal state of 77 K operation, the developed reverse-Brayton refrigeration system shows 1.83 kW at 68.2 K of cold-end temperature.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.429-435
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• 2020

This paper describes the experimental study of reverse-Brayton refrigeration system for application to high temperature superconductivity electric devices and LNG re-liquefaction. The reverse-Brayton refrigeration cycle is designed with operating pressure of 0.5 and 1.0 MPa, cooling capacity of 2 kW at 77 K, and neon as a working fluid. The refrigeration system is developed with multi scroll compressor, turbo expander and plate heat exchanger. From experiments, the performance characteristics of used components is measured and discussed for 77-120 K of operating temperature. The developed refrigeration system shows the cooling capacity of 1.23 kW at 77 K and 1.64 kW at 110 K.