Design, optimization and experimental testing of 2 K cryogenic plate-fin heat exchanger

Abstract

2 K heat exchanger is a key component of cryogenic system at advanced superconducting accelerator. The distributed parameter method was used to design and calculate the 2 K heat exchanger with a helium flow rate of 10 g/s, and the ideal constraints and real constraints were set according to the actual test conditions. The Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II) was selected as the optimization, and two groups of Pareto front solution sets were obtained. Two optimization results from the solution sets were selected as the optimal designs, According to the adaptability of the heat exchanger under different flow conditions The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) numerical simulation verification was carried out for the optimal design of the heat exchanger according to the actual constraint conditions., and the experimental test was carried out for the prototype with the same design. The experimental results show that the outlet temperature of the high-pressure side at 10 g/s is 2.983 K, and the difference from the design calculation is within 6 %, which verifies the accuracy of the design method. For the heat exchanger optimized according to the ideal constraint, the calculation results show that the outlet temperature of the high pressure side is 2.235 K. The heat transfer efficiency is 82.4 % and the pressure drop of low pressure side is 121.59 Pa.