Design of mixed refrigerant cycle for low temperature processes using a thermodynamic approach

Minimizing the work consumed by a refrigeration system is an eectivemeasure for reducing the cost of products in sub-ambient chemical processes, such asolen plants. a recent advancement has been the introduction of mixed working uidsin refrigeration systems in place of pure working uids. due to the lack of a systematicdesign method for the mixed refrigerant cycle (mrc), conventional approaches are largelytrial-and-error and, therefore, operations can be under far from optimal conditions. inthis paper, a novel method for systematic design of mrcs is presented, which combinesthe benets of the thermodynamics approach and mathematical optimization. based onthe success of the proposed systematic method for the optimal selection of refrigerantcomposition and operating pressures, the method is extended to give optimal arrangementof the cycle components. the procedure is demonstrated using a case study of the designof mrc for a typical olen plant.