Experimental Study of an Evaporative Cooling System in a Rotating Vertical Channel with a Circular Cross-Section for Large Hydro-Generators

Ruiwei Li and Lin Ruan ()
Additional contact information
Ruiwei Li: State Key Laboratory of High-Density Electromagnetic Power and Systems, Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
Lin Ruan: State Key Laboratory of High-Density Electromagnetic Power and Systems, Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China

Energies, 2025, vol. 18, issue 14, 1-19

Abstract: With the evolution of hydroelectric generators toward larger capacity and higher rotational speeds, the significa++nt increase in power density has rendered rotor cooling technology a critical bottleneck restricting performance enhancement. Addressing the need for feasibility verification and thermodynamic characteristic analysis of evaporative cooling applied to rotors, this study innovatively proposes an internal-cooling-based evaporative cooling architecture for rotor windings. By establishing a single-channel experimental platform for a rotor evaporative cooling system, the key parameters of the system circulation flow under varying centrifugal accelerations and thermal loads are obtained, revealing the flow mechanism of the cooling system. The experimental results demonstrate that the novel architecture has outstanding heat dissipation performance. Furthermore, the experimental findings reveal that the flow characteristics of the medium are governed by the coupled effect of centrifugal acceleration and thermal load; the flow rate decreases with increasing centrifugal acceleration and increases with rising thermal load. Centrifugal acceleration reduces frictional losses in the heating pipe, leading to a decrease in the inlet–outlet pressure difference. Through the integration of experimental data with classic formulas, this study refines the friction factor model, with the modified formula showing a discrepancy of −10% to +5% compared with the experimental results. Finally, the experiment was rerun to verify the universality of the modified friction factor.

Keywords: vertical hydroelectric generators; rotor evaporative cooling; centrifugal acceleration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/18/14/3681/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/18/14/3681/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:18:y:2025:i:14:p:3681-:d:1700254

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().