Potential of supercritical nitrogen to be used as cryogen for superconducting applications

Abstract

Superconductors have been widely employed in the power applications and it has all potential to replace normal conductor. Superconductors are more efficient than conventional conductors and causing negligible losses. The only challenge with superconducting technology is to maintain working temperature below superconducting tape’s critical temperature in order to avoid thermal quench of the tape. The critical temperature for Hg-based superconducting tapes is near 134 K which is more the critical temperature (Tc) of nitrogen i.e. 126.19 K. In the present study, the potential of supercritical nitrogen for the cooling of such superconductors has been determined. In this manuscript, the density of supercritical nitrogen has been studied and it has been found that density of supercritical nitrogen is much larger than liquid nitrogen thus can be considered for cooling applications in future. An attempt has been made in order to correlate the density by using a temperature–pressure dependent correlation that can be implemented during numerical code generation in order to map point-to-point property variation effects. Error analysis has also been performed and it has been concluded that supercritical nitrogen has enough potential in cooling applications.