Performance evaluation of sintered and stacked mesh regenerator for stirling cycle based LN2 plant Topagi Praveen*, Prabhakara S., Bapat S. L.1, Atrey M. D. Refrigeration and Cryogenics Laboratory, Mechanical Engineering Department, IIT Bombay, Bombay 1Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Dharwad, Dharwad *E-mail ID: praveentopagi@iitb.ac.in
Online published on 4 December, 2023. The Stirling type Cryogenerator for Liquid Nitrogen facility consists of a regenerative type of heat exchanger (Regenerator). The regenerator isa Stainless-Steel wire mesh stack sintered at a high temperature. The regenerative heat exchangers are prone to impurity accumulation in the porous region due to wear and tear of the sealing and guide rings from the neighboring components throughout the operation, resulting in a decrease in the capacity of liquefaction. In view of this, the regenerator must require cleaning regularly. As tried in our laboratory, the impurities are difficult to remove entirely from the porous region. As a result, the regenerator mustbe replaced with newones once it gets saturated with contaminants. At present, such regenerators require import at a substantial cost in foreign exchange. This work aims to manufacture such a sintered regenerative heat exchanger in our laboratory and test its performance. The present work involves the fabrication and sintering of SS wire mesh, assembling it in the liquid nitrogen Cryogenerator and monitoring liquefaction performance. Also, testing and comparison of stacked mesh regenerator against the sintered regenerator. Top Keywords Stirling Cycle, Liquefier, Sintered Regenerator, Heat Exchanger, Wire mesh. Top |