Cryogenic Refrigerator Evaluation for Medical and Rotating Machine Applications

Abstract

During the past two years, the General Electric Global Research Center (GE GRC) has been involved in two cryogenic projects in support of GE’s product divisions. The first project was conducted for GE Medical Systems, and involved the evaluation of Gifford McMahon (GM) cryocooler performance. The evaluation described in this paper was performed after an apparent failure of a large number of refurbished cryocoolers. The lost service productivity and increased costs resulting from the failures were significant enough to warrant a detailed examination of the problem. The root cause of the failures was evaluated using Six Sigma methodology and a corrective program developed with the supplier. The second project was the development of a superconductive generator cryogenic refrigeration system for GE Power Systems. The requirements for the superconductive application and the general approach are presented in this discussion.