Performance of extended surface from a cryocooler for subcooling liquid nitrogen by natural convection

Natural convection of subcooled liquid nitrogen under a horizontal flat plate is measured by experiment. This study is motivated mainly by our recent development of cryocooling systems for HTS power devices without any forced circulation of liquid nitrogen. Since the cold surface of a GM cryocooler is very limited, the cooling plate immersed in subcooled liquid nitrogen is thermally anchored to the cryocooler located at the top in order to serve as an extended surface. A vertical plate generating uniform heat flux is placed at a given distance under the cooling plate so that subcooled liquid may generate cellular flow by natural convection. The temperature distributions on the plates and liquid are measured during the cool-down and in steady state, from which the heat transfer coefficients are calculated and compared with the existing correlations for a horizontal surface with uniform temperature. A fair agreement is observed between two data sets, when the heat flux is small or the plate temperatures are relatively uniform in horizontal direction. Some discrepancy at higher heat flux is explained by the cellular flow pattern and the fin efficiency of the extended surface, resulting in the non-uniformity of the horizontal plate.