Thermal recovery of an inductive fault current limiter under different refrigeration conditions

摘要

We report new experimental results on the thermal behaviour of an inductive fault current limiter prototype based on a superconducting Bi-2223 tube. Our studies mainly focus on the recovery after a fault of relatively long duration (of the order of seconds). Tests have been made with the device submerged in a liquid nitrogen bath, and also in He gas and vacuum environments. We analyse the advantages of the increase of the limitation in He gas and vacuum environments as a consequence of the heating in the superconductor but also the problem of the very slow thermal recovery of the limiter, in the range of tens of minutes for a dissipated power around 30 W.