Counter flow cooling characteristics with liquid nitrogen for superconducting power cables Original Research Article

Counter flow cooling is one of effective cooling systems for superconducting power transmission cables to save space. In designing of HTc superconducting power cables, investigating cooling characteristics with liquid nitrogen is important. We have conducted counter flow cooling tests of a 100-m long duplex-counter-flow tube with liquid nitrogen and obtained basic data of initial cooling and temperature distributions along the tube. Measured temperature distributions are compared with those calculated that are based on our previous study. They agree with temperature distributions of inner tube but not for outer tube. During cooling tests, mass flow rate oscillations are observed. Relation between oscillation period and tube length is discussed. Reservoir pressure dependence of measured initial cooling time is also shown and compared with analytically estimated time in this paper.