Design, life testing, and future designs of cryogenic hydride refrigeration systems

Abstract

At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory a complete hydride refrigerator system has accumulated > 1000 h at 29 K or below (14 K minimum). At ERGENICS, a metal hydride compressor, without an attached cryogenic section, operated successfully for 35 000 cycles (5800 h). Component testing on check valves, hydride particle size, and JT expansion valves has shown negligible degradation after years of service or accelerated life. With electrical or solar heating, a combined charcoal and hydride refrigerator required power of ≈ 400 W to produce 1 W of liquid hydrogen cooling or 600 W to produce 1 W of 10 K cooling. Possible long-life additional stages to reach 4 K include adiabatic demagnetization refrigeration, helium desorption, or helium compressors with JT refrigeration. The efficiency for 10 K refrigeration is considerably better than any other mechanical refrigerator and the design is by far the simplest. Due to the lack of moving parts, its lifetime is projected to be many years, possibly decades, and there is virtually no associated magnetic field or vibration.