• 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.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.21-27
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• 2018

It is difficult to fabricate and maintain moving parts of expander at cryogenic temperature. This paper describes numerical analysis and experimental investigation on a cryogenic reciprocating expander without moving piston. An intake valve which takes high-pressure gas, and an exhaust valve which discharges low-pressure gas, are connected to a tube. The inside pressure of the tube is pulsated for work production. This geometric configuration is similar to that of pulse tube refrigerator but without regenerator. An orifice valve and a reservoir are installed to control the phase of the mass flow and the pressure. At the warm end, a heat exchanger rejects the heat which is converted from the produced work of the expanded gas. For the numerical analysis, mass conservation, energy conservation, and local mass function for valves are used as the governing equations. Before performing cryogenic experiments, we carried out the expander test at room temperature and compared the performance results with the numerical results. For cryogenic experiments, the gas is pre-cooled by liquid nitrogen, and then it enters the pulse tube expander. The experiments are controlled by the opening of the orifice valve. Numerical analysis also found the expander conditions that optimize the expander performance by changing the intake pressure and valve timing as well as the opening of the orifice valve. This paper discusses the experimental data and the numerical analysis results to understand the fundamental behavior of such a newly developed non-mechanical expander and elucidate its potential feature for cryogenic application.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.42-47
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• 2016

A free-piston reciprocating expander is a device which operates without any mechanical linkage to a stationary part. Since the motion of the floating piston is only controlled by the pressure difference at two ends of the piston, this kind of expander may indispensably require a sophisticated active control system equipped with multiple valves and reservoirs. In this paper, we have suggested a novel design that can further reduce complexity of the previously developed cryogenic free-piston expander configuration. It is a simple replacement of both multiple valves and reservoirs by a combination of an orifice valve and a reservoir. The functional characteristic of the integrated orifice-reservoir configuration is similar to that of a phase controller applied in a pulse tube refrigerator so that we designate the one as a phase controller. Depending on the orifice valve size in the phase controller, the different PV work which affects the expander performance is generated. The numerical model of this unique free-piston reciprocating expander utilizing a phase controller is established to understand and analyze quantitatively the performance variation of the expander under different valve timing and orifice valve size. The room temperature experiments are carried out to examine the performance of this newly developed cryogenic expander.

• 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.

• 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 Drive and Control
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.1-7
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• 2015

In this study, a spiral valve which is used with a cryogenic linear expander and composed of plural plate coil shapes was examined. Generally, a spiral valve is well known for having excellent efficiency and low noise characteristics. In order to determine the movement characteristics and to investigate the limit of valve displacement, the stress variations according to the changes of operating pressure, displacement and workable temperature are discussed. From this examination, it is considered that the results of this study will significantly facilitate the design and development of a spiral valve for the cryogenic linear expander.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.48-53
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• 2015

This paper deals with the flow characteristics of a reed valve analyzed using computational dynamics(CFD) for optimal design. The seat sizes of the valve are modeled asØ6[mm] and Ø8[mm] to compare the flow characteristics. The inlet boundary condition is entered at 10[kPa], 15[kPa], 20[kPa], and 30[kPa] and the outlet boundary condition is set to the atmospheric pressure. The flow coefficient(C) and pressure loss coefficient(K) are calculated from the results of flow analysis. From the analysis results, it was confirmed that the flow coefficient of a reed valve having a seat size of Ø6[mm] is greater than that having a seat size of Ø8[mm], and the coefficient of pressure loss of a valve with a seat size of Ø6[mm] is lower than the Ø8[mm] size valve.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.58-63
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• 2013

This paper presents the new cascade liquefaction cycles using $CO_2-C_2H_6-N_2$ and $CO_2-N_2O-N_2$. The performance of the cascade liquefaction cycles with respect to temperature differences in the LNG heat exchangers is analyzed using HYSYS software and then compared the performance of these cycles with phillips optimized cascade liquefaction cycle. The coefficient of performance of the new liquefaction cycles considered in this study decreases with the temperature differences in the LNG heat exchangers, but the compressor work, expander work and heat capacity in the LNG heat exchanger increases, respectively. From the comparison of performance of three cycles, the cascade liquefaction cycles using $CO_2-C_2H_6-N_2$ showed the highest COP. And the cycles using $CO_2-C_2H_6-N_2$ and $CO_2-N_2O-N_2$ presented the second and third highest COP, respectively. In the view of performance, the optimized cascade liquefaction cycle using $C_3H_8-C_2H_4-C_1H_4$ yields much better COP. But, in the environment view, it is found that the cascade liquefaction cycle using $CO_2-C_2H_6-N_2$ shows favorable characteristics.

• 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.