Basic insulating design of a magnet coil and a bobbin for a conduction cooled HTS SMES system

A conduction cooled high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnetic energy storage (SMES) is operated at a cryogenic temperature and high vacuum condition. Thus, insulation design at this condition is a key and an important element that should be established to accomplish miniaturization that is a big advantage of HTS SMES. However, the properties of insulators for cryogenic conditions in vacuum are virtually unknown. Therefore, we need active research and development of insulation concerning application of the conduction cooled HTS SMES. In this study, we investigated the basic insulation characteristics of some materials such as Kapton films, aluminium nitride (AlN) plates, vacuum and so on. As this result, we possessed basis data for insulation material selection and insulation design for the development of a 600 kJ class conduction cooled HTS SMES. Also, the insulating test of the mini-model was performed by the above insulation design. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.