• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.349-358
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• 1999

Thermodynamic cycle analysis has been performed to maximize the liquid amount for various hydrogen liquefaction systems using GM(Gifford-McMahon) refrigerator. Since the present authors' previous experiments showed that the liquefaction rate was approximately 5.1mg/s in a direct contact with a commercial GM refrigerator, the purpose of this study is to predict how much the liquefaction rate can be increased in different configurations and with improved heat exchanger performance. The optimal operating conditions have been analytically sought with real properties of normal hydrogen for the single-stage GM precooled L-H(Linde-Hampson) system, the two-stage GM direct contact system, the two-stage GM precooled L-H system and the two-stage helium GM-JT (Joule-Thomson) system. The maximum liquefaction rate has been predicted to be only about 7 times greater than the previous experiment, when the two-stage precooling is employed and the effectiveness of heat exchangers approaches to 99.0%. It is concluded that the liquefaction rate is limited mainly by the cooling capacity of the current GM refrigerators and a larger scale of hydrogen liquefaction is possible with a greater capacity of cryocooler at 60-70 K range.

• 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.