Design of non-flammable mixed refrigerant Joule-Thomson refrigerator for precooling stage of high temperature superconducting power cable

A cryogenic Joule-Thomson (JT) refrigerator has many advantages for large industrial applications, including easy cooling power adjustability and high reliability because there are no moving parts at low temperature. In this paper, a single stage and a cascade type of non-flammable (NF) mixed refrigerant (MR) JT refrigerators have been proposed for the precooling process of a neon/nitrogen mixed refrigerant JT refrigerator. The neon/nitrogen MR JT refrigerator is used to maintain a subcooled state of liquid nitrogen coolant for an HTS (high temperature superconductor) cable. Both selected MRs for the 1st stage (low temperature cycle) of the cascade MR JT refrigerator and the single MR JT refrigerator are composed of Nitrogen (N-2), Argon (Ar), Tetrafluoromethane (CF4, R14) and Octafluoropropane (C3F8, R218). R410A is selected as the refrigerant for the 2nd stage (high temperature cycle) of the cascade MR JT refrigerator, of which the cooling temperature is approximately 240 K. A commercial software with Peng-Robinson equation of state (EOS) is utilized to design the non-flammable MR JT refrigerator. The optimal design is discussed with consideration for various parameters such as the temperature staging, the operating pressure of the compressor and the mass flow rate of the working fluid. The maximum coefficient of performance (COP) and Carnot efficiency of the cascade MR JT refrigerator are obtained as 0.216 and 40%, respectively at 105 K. Exergy analysis is also carried out in this paper to reveal the irreversibility of the refrigeration cycle. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.