Speaker
Description
The Cryogenic Fluid In-situ Liquefaction for Landers (CryoFILL) tests were performed by NASA to demonstrate a technique for liquefaction of oxygen gas that will be produced on the Lunar or Martian surface. The test setup included a 2.1 cubic meter tank with a broad area cooling (BAC) network. A commercial cryocooler provided cooling to the BAC working fluid. Nearly forty steady state and transient liquefaction tests were conducted during the CryoFILL test series. Test variables included gaseous oxygen flow rate, tank initial fill level and pressure, environmental temperature, and the effective BAC cooling. A thermal/fluid model of the CryoFILL tank and its BAC system was developed in Thermal Desktop to simulate the experimental runs. To assess the performance of the CryoFILL tests an efficiency is defined for the BAC liquefaction process. A comparison of the experimental efficiency and that obtained from the model is presented here.
