Geomechanics and Engineering

  • 제27권2호
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  • Pages.179-187
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  • 2021
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  • 2005-307X(pISSN)
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  • 2092-6219(eISSN)
테크노프레스 (Techno-Press)
권호 표지
DOI QR코드

DOI QR Code

Applicability of liquid air as novel cryogenic refrigerant for subsea tunnelling construction

  • Son, Youngjin (Eco Infra Solutions Team2, SK Ecoplant) ;
  • Ko, Tae Young (Department of Energy and Resources Engineering, Kangwon National University) ;
  • Lee, Dongseop (POSCO) ;
  • Won, Jongmuk (Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ulsan) ;
  • Lee, In-Mo (School of Civil, Environmental, & Architectural Engineering, Korea University) ;
  • Choi, Hangseok (School of Civil, Environmental, & Architectural Engineering, Korea University)
  • 투고 : 2020.07.21
  • 심사 : 2021.10.07
  • 발행 : 2021.10.25
⟨ 이전 논문 다음 논문 ⟩

초록

The artificial ground freezing technique has been widely adopted in tunnel construction in order to impede heavy water flow and to reinforce weak sections during excavation. While liquid nitrogen is one of common cryogenic refrigerants particularly for rapid freezing, it has a serious potential risk of suffocation due to an abrupt increase in nitrogen content in the atmosphere after being vaporized. This paper introduces a novel cryogenic refrigerant, liquid air, and addresses the applicability of it by performing a series of laboratory chamber experiments. The key parameters for the application of artificial freezing using liquid air in subsea tunnel construction are freezing time and energy consumption, which were evaluated and discussed in this paper. The comparative study of these parameters between the use of liquid air and liquid nitrogen demonstrates that liquid air with no risk of suffocation can be a potential substitute for liquid nitrogen delivering the equivalent performance. In addition, the theoretical model was adopted to evaluate the chamber experiments in an effort to estimate the freezing time and the energy consumption ratio (energy consumption for maintaining the frozen state to the energy consumption for freezing soil specimens).

키워드

과제정보

This research was supported partially by a grant (Project number: 13SCIP-B066321-01 (Development of Key Subsea Tunnelling Technology)) from Korea Agency for Infrastructure Technology Advancement funded by Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of Korean government and by a grant (2019R1A2C2086647) from National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education.

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