Superconducting cable cooling system by helium gas and a mixture of gas and liquid helium

Patent · Sat Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1977

OSTI ID:862820

Dean, John W.

Thermally contacting, oppositely streaming cryogenic fluid streams in the same enclosure in a closed cycle that changes from a cool high pressure helium gas to a cooler reduced pressure helium fluid comprised of a mixture of gas and boiling liquid so as to be near the same temperature but at different pressures respectively in go and return legs that are in thermal contact with each other and in thermal contact with a longitudinally extending superconducting transmission line enclosed in the same cable enclosure that insulates the line from the ambient at a temperature T.sub.1. By first circulating the fluid in a go leg from a refrigerator at one end of the line as a high pressure helium gas near the normal boiling temperature of helium; then circulating the gas through an expander at the other end of the line where the gas becomes a mixture of reduced pressure gas and boiling liquid at its boiling temperature; then by circulating the mixture in a return leg that is separated from but in thermal contact with the gas in the go leg and in the same enclosure therewith; and finally returning the resulting low pressure gas to the refrigerator for compression into a high pressure gas at T.sub.2 is a closed cycle, where T.sub.1 >T.sub.2, the temperature distribution is such that the line temperature is nearly constant along its length from the refrigerator to the expander due to the boiling of the liquid in the mixture. A heat exchanger between the go and return lines removes the gas from the liquid in the return leg while cooling the go leg.

• Research Organization: Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
• Assignee: United States of America as represented by United States Energy (Washington, DC)
• Patent Number(s): 4,020,274
• Application Number: 05/649887
• OSTI ID: 862820
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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