Assessment and study of existing concepts and methods of cryogenic refrigeration for superconducting transmission cables. Final report

A review of current programs to develop superconducting power transmission shows that current plans require helium refrigerators operating at 5 to 130K and 3 to 15 atm pressure with compressor power input in the range of 1,300 to 3,500 HP. Future requirements will probably trend toward slightly higher temperatures and larger refrigerators. Present large helium refrigerators and APCI standard nitrogen plants were studied and an average outage frequency of about 18 per year is found to be typical for both. Cost and reliability studies of alternate refrigeration systems based on studies of components shows that the best current system which would have a failure rate of once in 20 years would consist of two full size oil flooded screw compressors in parallel, manifolded to two full size cold boxes and a liquid helium back up dewar. The principal area of development needed to implement this system is in the switch over mechanisms. These include switching to an auxillary power source in the event of power interruption, switching to the standby compressor, and switching to the back up liquid helium dewar. Costs are projected as being only slightly greater than preliminary estimates