Performances of closed cycle disk MHD generator with Ar/Cs

Book · Tue Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1996

OSTI ID:442749

Yamasaki, Hiroyuki; Hayakawa, Kazuhiko; Nagasaki, Yoshiki; Suzuki, Masafumi; Hanaoka, Ryo; Takata, Masaaki; Okubo, Masaaki ^[1]

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1. Tokyo Inst. of Technology (Japan). Research Lab. for Nuclear Reactors

Recent experimental results of shock-tube driven disk MHD generator with Ar/Cs are reported. Experiments were carried out at various load conditions, two different stagnation pressures and various seed fractions. Under the present experimental conditions, effects of the load resistance at the nozzle on enthalpy extractions were small. Enthalpy extractions remained small for the single load resistance. Effects of the stagnation pressure on enthalpy extractions were also found small. By optimizing seed fractions, enthalpy extractions higher than 20% were achieved for the segmented load resistance. About 35--45% of the inlet stagnation pressure was lost even in the nozzle by Joule dissipation and differences of the total pressure loss at each load condition were small. The pressure loss due to the shock wave was found small owing to the low incident Mach number of the flow. Different kinds of discharge structures were found. The circular luminous discharge due to shock wave appeared even in the nozzle for the open circuit of the nozzle. For the single load resistance, the spoke instability appeared in the nozzle, and this was due to the low electrical conductivity of plasma in the nozzle.

• OSTI ID: 442749
• Report Number(s): CONF-960805--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

30 DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION
ARGON
CESIUM
CLOSED-CYCLE MHD GENERATORS
DISK MHD GENERATORS
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
NON-EQUILIBRIUM PLASMA
PERFORMANCE
PLASMA SEEDING
PRESSURE DEPENDENCE