The Cause of performance degradation of cryogenic hydrogen system at J-PARC; A Little fire burns up a great deal of corn.

Aso, Tomokazu ; Teshigawara, Makoto   ; Ariyoshi, Gen  ; Haga, Katsuhiro  

In the helium refrigerator of the cryogenic system, a pressure drops gradually increased between heat exchangers and an adsorber (ADS), and degradated the cooling performance every operation since the beginning of 2015 to summer outage of 2016. This is because lubricating oil from the compressor accumulated in the heat exchangers and the ADS, especially in the surface layer on the inlet side of the felt layer for holding the activated charcoal in the ADS. From the amount of accumulated oil and the accumulative operating time of the compressor, it was thought that this was caused by the oil concentration at the ppb level. However, as a result of the re-investigations, it was found that the oil concentration in helium gas was temporarily high during the period from 2014 to 2016. The cause was a blockage in one of the oil return lines of the compressor's No.1 oil separator (OS-2), caused by a small piece of sponge used for cleaning during maintenance.