Downhole pulse tube refrigerators

This report summarizes a preliminary design study to explore the plausibility of using pulse tube refrigeration to cool instruments in a hot down-hole environment. The original motivation was to maintain Dave Reagor`s high-temperature superconducting electronics at 75 K, but the study has evolved to include three target design criteria: cooling at 30 C in a 300 C environment, cooling at 75 K in a 50 C environment, cooling at both 75 K and 30 C in a 250 C environment. These specific temperatures were chosen arbitrarily, as representative of what is possible. The primary goals are low cost, reliability, and small package diameter. Pulse-tube refrigeration is a rapidly growing sub-field of cryogenic refrigeration. The pulse tube refrigerator has recently become the simplest, cheapest, most rugged and reliable low-power cryocooler. The authors expect this technology will be applicable downhole because of the ratio of hot to cold temperatures (in absolute units, such as Kelvin) of interest in deep drilling is comparable to the ratios routinely achieved with cryogenic pulse-tube refrigerators