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A high pressure hybrid refrigerator that combines the active magnetic refrigeration effect with the Stirling cycle refrigeration effect at room temperature is studied here. In the apparatus, a helium-gas-filled alfa-type Stirling refrigerator uses Gd sheets as the regenerator and the regenerator is put in a magnetic field varying from 0 to 1.4 T, which is provided by a Halbach-type rotary permanent magnet assembly. With an operating pressure of 5.5 MPa and a frequency of 2.5 Hz, a no-load temperature of 273.8 K was reached in 9 minutes, which is lower than that of 277.6 K for pure Stirling cycle. For the hybrid operation, cooling powers of 40.3 W and 56.4 W were achieved over temperature spans of 15 K and 12 K, respectively. For the latter case, the cooling power improves by 28.5% if compared with that exploiting only the Stirling cycle refrigeration effect.

Condensation heat transfer and pressure drop of R170 were studied experimentally in a horizontal tube with inner diameter of 4 mm. The tests were conducted at saturation pressures from 1 MPa to 2.5 MPa, mass fluxes from 100 kg (m2∙s)−1 to 250 kg (m2∙s)−1 and average heat fluxes from 55.3 kW m−2 to 96.3 kW m−2 over the entire vapor quality range. The effects of vapor quality, mass flux and saturation pressure on condensation heat transfer and pressure drop were examined and analyzed. The experimental data were compared with various well-known correlations of condensation heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop. The comparison results showed that Koyama et al. correlation agreed with the experimental heat transfer coefficient with a mean absolute relative deviation less than 25%, and the Yan and Lin correlation can accurately predict the experimental pressure drop with a mean absolute relative deviation less than 18%.

Large-scale helium cryo-refrigerator is widely used in superconducting systems, nuclear fusion engineering, and scientific researches, etc., however, its energy efficiency is quite low. First, a 2 kW at 20.0 K helium Brayton cryo-refrigerator is built, and a series of tests have been systematically conducted to investigate the performance of the cryo-refrigerator. It is found that maximum heat conductance proportion (90.7%) appears in the heat exchangers of cold box rather than those of heat reservoirs, which is the main characteristic of the helium Brayton cryo-refrigerator/cycle different from the air Brayton refrigerator/cycle. Other three characteristics also lie in the configuration of refrigerant helium bypass, internal purifier and non-linearity of specific heat of helium. Second, a model of helium Brayton cryo-refrigerator/cycle is presented according to finite-time thermodynamics. The assumption named internal purification temperature depth (PTD) is introduced, and the heat capacity rate of whole cycle is divided into three different regions in accordance with the PTD: room temperature region, upper internal purification temperature region and lower one. Analytical expressions of cooling capacity and COP are obtained, and we found that the expressions are piecewise functions. Further, comparison between the model and the experimental results for cooling capacity of the helium cryo-refrigerator shows that error is less than 7.6%. The PTD not only helps to achieve the analytical formulae and indicates the working temperature of internal purifier, but also reflects the heat conductance distribution of heat exchangers in the cold box. Last, effects of the PTD on cooling capacity and COP of the helium cryo-refrigerator are investigated. In a word, this study provides a better understanding of energy conversion and utilization of the cycle and helps to optimize it.

An application of CFD model for the simulation of a strongly swirling and high speed flow in the vortex tube is presented in this paper. A partly modified standard K-ε turbulent model has been used to investigate the flow characteristics and energy separation effect in the vortex tube. It is found that there is an obvious energy separation effect in the vortex tube and the numerical solutions of the flow and temperature fields agree well with the experiments. More detailed flow features are obtained by the CFD calculation. Based on the validated numerical model, the influence of the cold flow fraction on the energy separation effect is also investigated and compared with experimental results.

The work proposes a simple and feasible calculation method––network model method to calculate temperature differences generated in thermo-driven thermoacoustic refrigerator (TAR). The theoretical calculation model is first built. The network model is given and used to make numerical calculations under different conditions including heat-pump stack positions in TAR, different oscillating pressure ratios (PR), plate spacings and different stack geometries. Theoretically calculated results show that the former two factors make significant influence on temperature differences, the influence of stack spacing on temperature difference has relation with PR, and cooling effect of pin-array stack is superior to that of parallel plate stack under other same conditions. Furthermore, theoretically calculated results and experimentally measured data are in good agreement at small acoustic pressure amplitude.

Hydrocarbons have high thermodynamic performances, belong to the group of natural refrigerants, and they are the main components in mixture Joule-Thomson low temperature refrigerators (MJTR). New evaluations of nucleate boiling contribution and nucleate boiling suppression factor in flow boiling heat transfer have been proposed for hydrocarbons. A forced convection heat transfer enhancement factor correlation incorporating liquid velocity has also been proposed. In addition, the comparisons of the new model and other classic models were made to evaluate its accuracy in heat transfer prediction.

In helium refrigeration system, high-speed centrifugal cold compressor is utilized to pumped gaseous helium from saturated liquid helium tank at low temperature and low pressure for producing superfluid helium or sub-cooled helium. Stall and surge are common unsteady flow phenomena in centrifugal cold compressors which severely limit operation range and impact efficiency reliability. In order to obtain the installed range of cold compressor, unsteady flow in the case of low mass flow or high pressure ratio is investigated by the CFD. From the results of the numerical analysis, it can be deduced that the pressure ratio increases with the decrease in reduced mass flow. With the decrease of the reduced mass flow, backflow and vortex are intensified near the shroud of impeller. The unsteady flow will not only increase the flow loss, but also damage the compressor. It provided a numerical foundation of analyzing the effect of unsteady flow field and reducing the flow loss, and it is helpful for the further study and able to instruct the designing.

In this paper, an experimental study on two-phase flow patterns (evaporation) for propane in a horizontal smooth tube is presented. The tests were conducted at various saturation pressures from 0.2 MPa to 0.4 MPa for different mass velocities from 70 kg/(m 2 s) to 180 kg/(m 2 s) and two heat fluxes (20.16 kW/m 2 and 37.1 kW/m 2 ) in the entire ranges of vapour qualities. Several flow pattern maps were compared with the experimental flow pattern data, especially for the intermittent/annular (I/A) transition line. Finally, a transition equation of intermittent/annular flow for propane was modified with an improved flow pattern map.