Abstract
A helium compressor is one of the important components comprising a cryogenic refrigerator. The purpous of this investigation is to develop a new small-capacity helium screw compressor. The performance of a single-stage compressor at high compression ratio and the cooling performance of the compressor are investigated. A semi-hermetic screw compressor with new profile screw rotors, with which high performance can be obtained, is utilized in this investigation. Lubricating oil is applied to cool the compressor motor and the compressed gas. As a result, an overall isentropic efficiency of 80% is obtained when helium is compressed to a compression ratio of 19.8 with a single-stage screw compressor. At the same time, the temperature of a compressor motor and discharge gas can be maintained at low levels. Therefore, it is found that a single-stage screw compressor can compress helium to high compression ratio.
