Praxair, Inc. has provided cooling to the HTS cable at the Bixby Road substation in Columbus, Ohio for the past year. The refrigeration has been supplied by an open-loop liquid nitrogen system. Data collected during system operation indicate that the average heat load from the HTS cable is 1.6 kW and the average total heat load on the system is 4.9 kW. In order to more effectively provide HTS cable refrigeration, Praxair has developed a large capacity Stirling-type pulse tube cryocooler. Performance testing of prototype and initial production models of the pulse tube coldhead has demonstrated a refrigeration capacity for nitrogen subcooling of 1 kW at 77 K when a 20 kW, dual-opposed pressure wave generator is used to generate acoustic power for the cryocooler. The initial production models of this pulse tube refrigerator are ready for deployment for field testing at Bixby Road. Operation of these pulse tube units will reduce the nitrogen consumption of the open-loop cooling system and data on the reliability and performance of the cryocoolers will be collected.
[1]
Jonathan Demko,et al.
Installation and operation of the Southwire 30-meter high-temperature superconducting power cable
,
2001
.
[2]
J. Moscovic,et al.
Testing and Demonstration Results of the 350 m Long HTS Cable System Installed in Albany, NY
,
2007,
IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity.
[3]
A. Allais,et al.
Development and Demonstration of a HTS Power Cable to Operate in the Long Island Power Authority Transmission Grid
,
2007,
IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity.
[4]
J.A. Demko,et al.
Triaxial HTS Cable for the AEP Bixby Project
,
2007,
IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity.