Design of mass flow rate measurement system for SST-1 superconducting magnet system

Superconducting Magnet System (SCMS) of Steady State Superconducting Tokamak - 1 (SST-1) is forced-flow cooled by a closed cycle 1.3 kW (at 4.5 K) class Helium Refrigerator cum Liquefier (HRL) system. An accurate measurement of helium mass flow rate in different coils is required to ensure the uniform cooling of the cold mass in the entire range of operating temperature (300 K to 4.5 K) and pressure (0.9-0.4 MPa). To meet this requirement, indigenously designed and fabricated venturi meters are installed on 27 different coils of SST-1 SCMS. A VME based Data Acquisition System (DAS) has been developed and used to acquire the flow measurement data from different flowmeters. The details of the design of venturi meter, its different measurement and signal conditioning components, the data acquisition system and the mass flow rate calculation method are described in this paper. The mass flow rate measurement data from cryogenic acceptance and SST-1 magnet commissioning experiments are also presented and discussed in this paper.