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Sub-Cooled Liquid Nitrogen Test System for Cooling HTS Synchronous Motor

Article  in  IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity · June 2012

DOI: 10.1109/TASC.2011.2174558

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4701304 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 22, NO. 3, JUNE 2012

Sub-Cooled Liquid Nitrogen Test System for Cooling

HTS Synchronous Motor
Anbin Chen, Fengyu Xu, Xiaokun Liu, Yubao He, Zonglin Wu, Yingshun Zhu, Zhengnan Han, and Liyi Li

Abstract—A 400 kW radial-axial flux type experimental HTS

synchronous motor is designed. There are twelve armature coils
using HTS wires in the motor. They are accommodated in the
cooling vessels made of FRP material, and twelve cooling vessels
are enclosed in the vacuum vessel. In order to cool the HTS coils
of the motor, a sub-cooled liquid nitrogen cryogenic system is
presented. The operation temperature is below 70 K. This system
consists of vacuum system, liquid nitrogen dewar, data acquisition
system and a cold box with liquid nitrogen pump, G-M cryore-
frigerator, cryogenic valve and a heater inside. The heater can
present the heat of the HTS coils. In this paper, the design and
the composition of this test cooling system are presented. When
liquid nitrogen is injected into the vessel and the cryorefrigerator
Fig. 1. Schematic for the sub-cooled liquid nitrogen cooling system.
is operating, the cool down curve of the test system is obtained.
After adding heat to the system, the capacity curve of the system
is presented in this paper. The results proved that this sub-cooled
liquid nitrogen system can be used for cooling the actual armature liquid nitrogen could obtain higher efficiency and better elec-
windings in the HTS motor.
trical performances for HTS system [4]–[10].
Index Terms—Cryogenic, high temperature superconductivity, In order to cool HTS synchronous motor, a sub-cooled liquid
sub-cooled liquid nitrogen, superconducting motor. nitrogen cooling system which operating temperature is below
70 K is presented in this paper. A cryorefrigerator is used in
the system to make the liquid nitrogen achieve subcooled state.
I. INTRODUCTION The outlet lowest temperature of the subcooled system will be
kept in the range of 66–69 K. Using this cooling system, we
can provide sub-cooled liquid nitrogen for cooling the actual
H TS motor technology is now in a position to deliver
highly compact, lightweight, high efficiency, inherently
quiet propulsion motors to meet the needs of the customers.
armature windings in the HTS motor.

An axial and radial flux type HTS synchronous motor is de- II. DESIGN OF THE CRYOGENIC SYSTEM
signed and constructed at Harbin Institute of Technology. The
designed rating capacity of the HTS experiment motor is 400 A. Flow Chart of the System
kW. The armature terminal voltage is 690 V and the armature
The sub-cooled liquid nitrogen cooling system is shown in
rating current is 240 A. The rating speed is 250 rpm [1]–[3].
Fig. 1.
Liquid nitrogen cooling systems have been developed for
The system consists of two cryorefrigerators, heat exchanger
HTS power devices over the past several years since liquid
in the sub-cooler, a cryogenic pump immersed in liquid ni-
nitrogen is a cheap and excellent cooling medium and also a
trogen, a helium gas tank, a liquid nitrogen dewar, vacuum
good electrical insulator. In recent research of high temperature
system and data acquisition system. The cryorefrigerators, heat
superconducting electric power application, such as HTS power
exchanger, cryogenic pump and cryogenic valve are in the
line, HTS motor and HTS power transformer, sub-cooled liquid
same cold box. In order to produce sub-cooled liquid nitrogen,
nitrogen is considered as an important coolant for cooling
GM cryorefrigerator is needed and the temperature of the heat
the device. Compared to saturated liquid nitrogen, sub-cooled
exchanger connected to the cryorefrigerator is controlled to
maintain the temperature a little above freezing temperature of
Manuscript received September 06, 2011; accepted October 30, 2011. Date
nitrogen. Passing through the heat exchanger in the sub-cooler,
of publication November 03, 2011; date of current version May 24, 2012. This
work was supported in part by the P.R. China Department of The Ministry of sub-cooled liquid nitrogen is obtained. Then the sub-cooled
Science and Technology under Grant 2008DFR70120. liquid nitrogen is fed into the HTS coils cryostat to cool the
A. Chen, F. Xu, X. Liu, Y. He, Z. Wu, Z. Han, and L. Li are with the Insti-
coils and comes back to the cryogenic pump vessel. To main-
tute of Cryogenics and Superconductive Technology, Harbin Institute of Tech-
nology, Harbin 150080, Heilongjiang, P. R. China (e-mail: chenab@hit.edu.cn). tain the pressure of the circulated sub-cooled liquid nitrogen,
Y. Zhu is with the Institute of High Energy Physics, Beijing 100049, China helium gas is fed into the cryogenic pump vessel. Liquid ni-
(e-mail: yszhu@ihep.ac.cn).
trogen pump is used for the circulation of the sub-cooled liquid
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. nitrogen. Based on the head load of the HTS coils, the flow rate
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TASC.2011.2174558 of the cryogenic pump can be adjusted.

1051-8223/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE

CHEN et al.: SUB-COOLED LIQUID NITROGEN TEST SYSTEM FOR COOLING HTS SYNCHRONOUS MOTOR
Fig. 2. Layout of the sub-cooled liquid nitrogen system.
Fig. 3. Schematic for the sub-cooled liquid nitrogen test cooling system.
Fig. 2 shows the layout of the system.
B. Characters of the System
There were some following characters in the sub-cooled
liquid nitrogen cooling system, which could be obtained from
[11]:
• The heat loss of the HTS coils cryostat is 658.8 W by cal-
culation.
• The operating temperature of the liquid in the sub-cooler
vessel is lower than 66 K. The operating pressure is kept
at 0.02 MPa in the vessel.
• The design operating flow rate of sub-cooled liquid ni-
trogen is 908 L/h.
• The surface area of each coil heat exchanger in the sub-
cooler is 0.85 . When the heat load is maximal, if the
inlet temperature of sub-cooler is 69 K, the outlet temper-
ature is 67 K.
III. TEST AND ANALYSIS OF THE SYSTEM
Because the HTS motor has not been installed, we cancel the
transfer-line from the cooling system. In order to predict
the performance of the cooling system, we add a heater in the
cryogenic pump vessel instead of the heat load of the HTS coils.
Sub-cooled liquid nitrogen from the sub-cooler is not used to
cool the HTS coils through the transfer-line, but direct goes
into the cryogenic pump vessel and be heated in the vessel. Then
the higher temperature liquid nitrogen is feed into the sub-cooler
by the cryogenic pump. The whole circulation of the Sub-cooled
liquid nitrogen is finished in one cold box. Fig. 3 shows the flow
chart for the test cooling system.
4701304
Fig. 4. Photograph of the test cooling system.
Fig. 5. The equipments on the top flange of the cold box.
A. Composition of the Test Cooling System
Fig. 4 shows the photograph of the test cooling system. There
are cold box, dewar, helium tank, compressor and vacuum
pump in the system.
Fig. 5 shows the equipments on the top flange of the cold box.
We only install one cryorefrigerator on top flange of the cold box
in the test cooling system. Because two cryorefrigerators are the
same, they are parallel connected to the cryogenic pipes. So, if
we get the cooling capacity using one cryorefrigerator, we could
deduce the cooling capacity using two cryorefrigerators.
The temperature, the pressure and the flow rate of sub-cooled
liquid nitrogen are gathered in real time. There are 17 platinum
resistance temperature sensors in the system. The cold head tem-
perature, inlet and outlet temperature of sub-cooler, the temper-
ature of heater plate and the sub-cooled liquid nitrogen tempera-
ture in two containers are all presented. There are three pressure
transducers in the system, two of them are used to measure the
inlet and outlet pressure of the heat exchanger in the sub-cooler
(a pressure head of the pump), the other is used to measure the
pressure in the sub-cooler. There is one venture flow meter in
the system for measuring the flow rate of sub-cooled liquid ni-
trogen. Detailed position of all these sensors is shown in Fig. 6.
B. Power Determination of the Heater
There is a heater in the cryogenic pump vessel instead of the
heat load of the HTS coils. Before installed in the vessel, the
power of the heater must be determined. The power of the heater
is equal to the cooling capacity of the cryorefrigerator minus the
heat load of the system.
The heat load of the system comprises the heat loss generated
by cryogenic valve, access ports, mechanical supports, radiation
4701304
Fig. 6. Interface of the data acquisition system.
TABLE I
HEAT LOAD OF THE SYSTEM
The pump work can be calculated by the following equation.
Fig. 7. Cooling capacity of AL600 cryorefrigerator (50 Hz).
and pump work. The heat load of the system is calculated and
shown in Table I. The total heat load of the system is 53.9 W.
According to Fig. 7, the cooling capacity of AL600 cryore-
frigerator is 425 W at 60 K.
So, the power of the heater should be higher than 369.5 W
(when operating temperature more than 60 K). We use eight
heaters in the vessel. Each heater is 50 W. Total amount of the
heating power is 400 W. The power can be adjusted from 0 W to
400 W. Fig. 8 shows the arrangement of the heaters in the cryo-
genic pump vessel. They are well connected to an aluminum
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 22, NO. 3, JUNE 2012
Fig. 8. The heater arranged in the cryogenic pump vessel.
Fig. 9. Cool-down curve of the liquid nitrogen in the sub-cooler.
Fig. 10. Cool-down curve of the liquid nitrogen at inlet and outlet of the sub-
cooler.
plate. Four of them are on top of the plate and the others are
under.
C. Test Result of the Cooling System
Fig. 9 shows the cool down curve of the liquid nitrogen in the
sub-cooler, and Fig. 10 shows the cool down curve of the inlet
and outlet temperature of the sub-cooler. From Figs. 9 and 10 we
could see, it is almost 130 minutes to fill the sub-cooler vessel
and pump vessel full with liquid nitrogen. The temperature
of the sub-cooler is 77 K. Then turn on the cryorefrigerator and
pump, the temperature and the pressure of the sub-cooler
will gradually drop. It cost about 190 minutes reducing the outlet
temperature of the sub-cooler to 65 K. Then turn on the heater.
CHEN et al.: SUB-COOLED LIQUID NITROGEN TEST SYSTEM FOR COOLING HTS SYNCHRONOUS MOTOR 4701304

K. So, when the sub-cooled liquid nitrogen is below 70 K, this

test system will provide maximum 375 W cooling capacity. If
we add another cryorefrigerator in the cold box, then the system
will provide maximum 750 W cooling capacity.
In the future, the system will be used for cooling the HTS
motor. The heat load of the HTS coils is 658.8 W and the heat
load of the cold box is 47.6 W. So if the pump work in the system
is lower than 43.6 W, this cooling capacity will meet the needs
of cooling the actual armature windings in the HTS motor.

Fig. 11. The cooling capacity with respect to various temperatures.
When the outlet temperature of the sub-cooler is 66.9 K, the
power of the heater is 347 W. The sub-cooled liquid nitrogen
system reaches balance at this time. The pressure of the sub-
cooler is 0.02 MPa. The inlet pressure of the heat exchanger in
the sub-cooler is 0.15 MPa, and the outlet pressure is 0.1 MPa.
The flow rate of the sub-cooled liquid nitrogen achieves 450 L/h
according to the venture flow meter in the system.
When the power of the heater is adjusted, the outlet tempera-
ture of the sub-cooler will be changed. Fig. 11 shows the cooling
capacity with respect to various temperatures. Fig. 11 indicates
when the outlet temperature of the sub-cooler changes from 65.4
K to 69.9 K, the cooling capacity of the system changes from
330 W to 375 W.
IV. CONCLUSION
A sub-cooled liquid nitrogen test system is set up for cooling
HTS motor. A cryorefrigerator and a liquid nitrogen pump are
used in this system to produce sub-cooled liquid nitrogen. Both
of them are installed in the same test cold box. It takes about
3 hours to cool down the liquid nitrogen to sub-cooled state
and the outlet temperature of the sub-cooler is 65 K. When the
heating power is changed from 330 W to 375 W, the outlet tem-
perature of the sub-cooler will be changed from 65.4 K to 69.9
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