The natural fluid nitrous oxide -: an option as substitute for low temperature synthetic refrigerants

A theoretical investigation was performed concerning the coefficient of performance (COP) of cascade refrigerating systems using N2O as refrigerant for the low temperature cascade stage and various natural refrigerants like ammonia, propane, propene, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide itself for the high temperature stage. The basis of the comparison was a conventional R23/R134a-cascade refrigerating system for heat rejection temperatures of +55, +35 and +25 degrees C for air cooling, cooling tower water cooling and city water cooling, respectively. It can be stated that such an application of N2O at the primary stage and ammonia or hydrocarbons as refrigerants at the secondary stage in refrigerating systems achieves similar COP-values compared to the R23/R134a-cascade refrigerating system, whereas CO2 and N2O in a transcritical cycle in general perform worse. An application of N2O in a two-stage compression cycle with interstage injection and city water cooling at low and high interstage temperatures has a nearly equal COP as a conventional R23/R134a-cascade refrigerating system and is an interesting alternative for small laboratory refrigerating systems. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.