Impact of Perlator on the cooling liquid flow and hottest point temperature of superconducting windings in HTS transformer

The generated heat by the superconducting windings and the other parts such as current leads in transformer increases the hottest point temperature (HPT) and causes the high temperature superconducting (HTS) windings to quench. Due to the properties of superconducting windings, reducing the HPT is of critical importance for the stable operation of the HTS transformer. The cooling system of HTS transformers, not only provides the cryogenic temperature for the proper operation of the superconductors but also is responsible for dissipating the generated heat by the windings. In this paper, the effect of the angle of inlet pipes in cooling system was investigated. This was a simple and effective solution which increases the heat transfer in liquid nitrogen. It was shown that inlet angle has a significant effect on the flow turbulence and the windings temperature. The Perlator is used as a lattice sheet which is installed inside the inlet valve and increases the turbulence of inlet flow of liquid nitrogen to increase heat transfer and reduce HPT. The thermal analysis is obtained by finite element method using ANSYS Fluent software. The influence of changing the inlet pipe angle and different structures of Perlator on heat transfer was investigated.