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Study on the Coupling Characteristics of Sub-Kelvin Sorption Cooler and 4 K Stirling-type Pulse Tube Cryocooler with Small Cooling Capacity

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Abstract

Helium sorption cooler, one of the important refrigeration technologies to obtain Sub-Kelvin temperature, usually requires the use of liquid helium or GM type cryocooler to provide pre-cooling temperatures below 4 K, which is insufficient in terms of life, weight, and power consumption, thus limiting its application in some ground low-temperature experiments, but also more importantly, in space exploration. The use of lightweight mechanical refrigerators to replace the above-mentioned pre-cooling methods is an important development direction of the sorption cooler. The composite cooling system of “multi-stage Stirling/pulse tube cryocooler + JT refrigerator” and the Stirling-type pulse tube cryocooler (SPTC) are important lightweight refrigeration methods that can obtain temperatures below 4 K, but their cooling capacities are very small (especially for SPTC, its 4 K cooling capacity is only a few milliwatts), which is a severe challenge for the development of lightweight sub-Kelvin sorption cooler. This paper proposes a novel pre-cooling process that can effectively reduce the requirement for 4 K cooling capacity by cascade utilization of the SPTC cooling power, that is, cooling the radiation shield, sorption pump, and pump tube of the sorption cooler by outputting the cooling capacity at higher temperature positions of the SPTC, and only the evaporator/condenser remains on the 4 K cold head. A calculation model of the sorption cooler is established, and some verification experiments are carried out. The results show that the novel process can reduce the required cooling capacity from 13.4 mW at 4 K to 3.0 mW at 4 K in the condensation stage, and from 91.8 mW at 4 K to 29.7 mW at 10 K in the stable evaporation stage, which can save hundreds to thousands of watts of electrical power according to the current SPTC cooling efficiency.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 12073058, No. U1831203), Strategic Pilot Projects in Space Science of China (No. XDA15010400), Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. QYZDY-SSW-JSC028), and Youth Innovation Promotion Association of Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. 2019030).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Cryogenics, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Xiaotong Xi, Biao Yang, Zhaozhao Gao, Liubiao Chen, Yuan Zhou & Junjie Wang

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Xiaotong Xi, Biao Yang, Zhaozhao Gao, Liubiao Chen, Yuan Zhou & Junjie Wang

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  1. Xiaotong Xi
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  2. Biao Yang
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  3. Zhaozhao Gao
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  4. Liubiao Chen
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  5. Yuan Zhou
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Correspondence to Liubiao Chen.

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Xi, X., Yang, B., Gao, Z. et al. Study on the Coupling Characteristics of Sub-Kelvin Sorption Cooler and 4 K Stirling-type Pulse Tube Cryocooler with Small Cooling Capacity. J Low Temp Phys 210, 376–392 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-022-02894-7

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