Development of a Turbo-Brayton Cooling System for HTS Power Devices

Abstract

High-temperature superconducting (HTS) power devices such as power cables, transformers, current limiters, and superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) are approaching the stage where they can be adopted for practical use. A cooling system requires cooling capacity of 2 to 10 kW at 65 K and high COP, and is also required to be maintenance-free and compact. However there are no adequate cooling systems among commercial systems. Therefore, we are developing a turbo-Brayton cycle refrigerator using neon gas as the working fluid with cooling capacity of 2 kW at 65 K. Details of the turbo-Brayton cycle refrigerator are described in this paper.