Got a call at about 10:00 this morning, the whole system had tripped off.
No power bumps or other disturbances. When I arrived the only fault
indications were "ColdBox Trip" light on the compressor panel and on the
QRL panel the red "ColdBox" LED was ON. On the SULZER panel the
yellow "Cryostat Quench" light was ON. On the First Trip logger #1 and #15
LED's were ON. But no indication about what the actual fault was. Cooling
water OK, compressed air OK, compressor ventilation OK. Outside ambient
temperature was cooler than we had last week. BIG1 was off but when I
turned it back on the vacuum looked good but was slowly rising as the
solenoid warmed. I put the jumper on the vacuum controller. Prepared system
for re-start.
Started compressor. Started flow thru coldbox. Raised discharge pressure.
Started turbine flow. Didn't get any freezing but it seemed that T1 speed
wandered slowly +/-0.1k rev/sec when it got up to about 3.6k revs/sec, but
this only lasted for a second or two. Not sure if I was just seeing things.
Got turbines up to speed and started // warm return flow. Solenoid had been
running at 500 Amps and when it quenched and sat warming it had warmed to
about 40 K. Switched it to //cold return too soon and solenoid started to
warm slightly. Back to // warm return mode. Had to throttle flow thru
solenoid with warm return valves to get effective cooling. If had return
valves wide open TI121 would warm up too much. Discovered that if I
throttle the flow out of the solenoid slightly then TI121 would fall and
solenoid would start to cool. Less flow gave more cooling. Don't quite
understand that one. Switched to // cold return mode when solenoid temps
falling below 20K.
About 15:00 stable // cold return cooling. Going home for a while.
19:30 solenoid temps bottomed out at about 11K. Switch to series mode.
Something strange about the first trip detect. I reset it once and when I
checked it an hour or two later it showed a trip on #1 and #15 LED's even
though nothing had happened. Something must be causing false indications.
20:15 series cooling, solenoid temps at about 6K, LHe level rising slowly
at about 10%. Removed jumper on vacuum controller. |