Heat Exchanger Design for the 30 kA Gas Cooled Current Leads in the ENEA 12 T CICC Facility

The preliminary design of the heat exchanger part for the pair of 30 kA hybrid current leads that will be installed in the ENEA 12 T CICC facility is presented. To limit the overall length and the amount of cooling gas to be employed, a hybrid resistive/HTS configuration has been conceived. Regarding the resistive part, a screw-like solution has been adopted for the following reasons: first to guarantee that helium would wet all the finned surfaces of the heat exchanger limiting possible short-path typically present in braided solutions, then to guarantee a proper insulation by creating a counter screw that seals this component and finally to limit the manufacture cost. Starting from the conceptual design were the hybrid model has been studied, in the present paper the resistive section is analysed in greater detail making use of a dedicated 1-D convective tool and 3-D finite element analyses.