A superconducting fault current limiter integrated in the cold heat exchanger of a thermoacoustic refrigerator

In this work we probe a compact superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) integrated in the cold heat exchanger of a thermoacoustic refrigerator. A design for an SFCL device with a power of about 2.2 kW is presented and described in detail. A thermoacoustic refrigerator is also proposed which, under fault conditions, must be able to remove around 50 W at 80 K. A simulation routine is run to test the performance of the SFCL, based on YBCO films, in terms of both the limiting capacity and the energy to be dissipated and removed inside the heat exchanger.