Development of Cryogenic Helium Turboexpander

Abstract

Cryogenic turboexpander is the significant and crucial component for the productions of cryogenic liquids in cryogenic production plants. Turboexpander will employ for getting refrigeration effect rather than work extraction in gas liquefaction plants. Development of cryogenic turboexpanders hasbeen taken place rapidly in India in the past decade. Most of the research organizations like BARC and IPR has already created sizable knowledge in the development, design and manufacturing of turboexpanders. Institute for Plasma Research (IPR, Gandhinagar) is a research organization in plasma physics is needing a in house liquid helium production plant for it’s fusion program. For development of a cryogenic liquid helium plant at IPR, three different turboexanders for different operating thermal parameters with same working principle is needed. This present study explains the conceptual design of major turboexpander components such as Turbine wheel, diffuser and nozzle. The study is further extended to CFD analysis of the turboexpander for understanding of losses, efficiency and optimization of designed parameters. CFD analysis of turboexpander gives the clear picture of flow phenomenon to get to know more about the designed components performance. In future after visualizing and understanding the flow, performance of turboexpander, each designed component has to optimize and further engineering design, engineering drawing has to produce for manufacturing. The future work is also incorporated in this present study.