The development of a proff of principle superfluid Joule-Thomson refrigerator for cooling below 1 Kelvin

A new type of sub-Kelvin refrigerator, the superfluid Joule-Thomson refrigerator, has been developed and its performance has been experimentally verified. This refrigerator uses a liquid superfluid mixture of He and 4He as the working fluid and depends on the non-ideal-gas-like behavior of the 3He component in this mixture to provide cooling when the mixture is throttled. This work included the design and development of low dissipation valves and a low temperature compressor that were successfully operated at 1.2 K. Analytical and numerical models were developed to predict the performance of the refrigerator and to provide insight to improve and further develop this new technology. The refrigerator achieved an ultimate temperature of 0.68 K when rejecting heat at 1.2 K.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Miller, Franklin K., 1970-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• John Brisson.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/30345

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/30345