Development of a centrifugal hydrogen pump for the cryogenic hydrogen system in J-PARC

Aso, Tomokazu ; Tatsumoto, Hideki; Otsu, Kiichi; Uehara, Toshiaki; Kawakami, Yoshihiko; Sakurayama, Hisashi; Futakawa, Masatoshi  ; Ushijima, Isamu*; Yoshinaga, Seiichiro*

A centrifugal hydrogen pump that is a foil type self acting gas bearing had developed for the cryogenic hydrogen system in J-PARC, and the performance test was carried out in the system operation. The cryogenic hydrogen system plays a role in supplying supercritical hydrogen at a temperature of around 20 K and pressure of 1.5 MPa to three moderators and removing the nuclear heating of 3.8 kW at a proton beam of 1 MW from accelerators. In order to satisfy the neutronic performance, the temperature difference through the moderator should be reduced below 3 K. Therefore, cryogenic supercritical hydrogen should be circulated with the mass flow rate more than 160 g/s. We confirmed the characteristics of the pump satisfy the required performance.