TY - JOUR
TI - Thermodynamic investigations of Zeotropic mixture of R290, R23 and R14 on three-stage auto refrigerating cascade system
AU - Sivakumar Mayilsamy
AU - Somasudaram Periasamy
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2016
VL - 20
IS - 6
SP - 2073
EP - 2086
PT - Article
AB - The zeotropic mixture of environment friendly refrigerants (hydrocarbons and hydrofluorocarbons) being the only alternatives for working fluid in low temperature refrigeration system. Hence, three-stage auto refrigerating cascade system was studied for the existence using four combinations of three-component zeotropic mixture of six different refrigerants. The exergy analysis confirmed the existence of three-stage auto refrigerating cascade system. The performances of the system like coefficient of performance, exergy lost, exergic efficiency, efficiency defect, and the evaporating temperature achieved were investigated for different mass fractions in order to verify the effect of mass fraction on them. In accordance with the environmental issues and the process of sustainable development, the three-component zeotropic mixture of R290/R23/R14 with the mass fraction of 0.218:0.346:0.436 was performing better and hence can be suggested as an alternative refrigerant for three-stage auto refrigerating cascade system operating at very low evaporating temperature in the range of –97°C (176 K), at coefficient of performance of 0.253 and comparatively increased exergic efficiency up to 16.3% (58.5%).