Operating Experience: Helium Extraction and Liquefaction Expansion Devices.

摘要

The Energy Doubler Program at the National Accelerator Laboratory and activities proposed by other National Laboratories will require low temperature helium refrigerators that are about the same size as the largest helium liquefiers in this country. For all of these developing programs, it is very important that the refrigerator be highly reliable and capable of continuous operation. 0f equal importance is that the cooling system operate properly when first installed-rework is very time consuming and expensive. With these objectives in mind, NBS personnel visited five helium extraction facilities which have on-site the four largest helium liquefiers in the U.S. Although the primary intent was to determine how successfully the rather sophisticated helium expansion devices operated in the field, we also questioned the supervisors, operators and maintenance personnel about the other major components of the process plants since the refrigerators will also have the same sort of vacuum insulation systems, purifiers and compressors which must function reliably.