Development of Mixed Refrigerant Joule-Thomson Cryocooler

Joule–Thomson (J-T) cryocoolers using pure substances such as nitrogen, argon have historically
been limited to very low thermodynamic efficiencies due to the small real-gas effect for these
fluids. In the recent past significant research have been carried out to improve the performance of
the J-T cryocoolers by using mixed refrigerants (usually, 5-8 components) instead of pure
substance as the working fluid in it. Driven by an oil-lubricated commercial compressor makes
the MR J-T cryocooler more competitive with other type coolers. This new revival refrigeration
method with multi-component mixture has demonstrated high performance in the cooling
temperature range from 80 to 230 K in many applications, such as cooling infrared sensors, gas
chiller or liquefaction, cryosurgery, cryo-preservation, water vapor cryo-trapping, etc. The merits
of mixed-gases refrigeration is obvious such as low cost, high reliability, high efficiency, and
easily to be produced in industry scale, etc.

Challenges
The components of the mixture and its
composition are the most important
parameters in the design of mixed refrigerant
Joule-Thomson (MR J-T) cryocooler.
Additionally, the design of these MR J-T
systems is currently limited by a lack of
generally applicable data or theory that allow
accurate prediction of the forced heat transfer
coefficient for a multi-phase, multi-
component fluid.

Status
We at Refrigeration and cryogenics laboratory
designed and successfully developed low
cost, highly reliable and efficient MR J-T
cryocooler using simple 1 Ton air- multi tubes-in-tube helical, compact heat
conditioning compressor. The special kind of exchanger is also fabricated for which the
efficiency is in the range of 95-99 % for all
the mixtures tested. Extensive
experimentations have been carried out to
investigate the effect of mixture and operating
conditions on the performance of the system.
It is demonstrated that the components and
their percentage composition in the mixture
dictate the net cooling capacity as well as the
lowest temperature that can be achieved for a
given system.
A record low temperature of 65 K is achieved
using specific Ne-Nitrogen-Hydrocarbon
mixture. Cooling capacity of about 6.1 W at
80K with a compressor power input of 868 W
and 21 W at 100 K with compressor power
input of 993 W is obtained for the same
mixture. Analyzing the experimental data
obtained, empirical correlation to design the
capillary tube expanding the multi-component
non-azeotropic mixture is also proposed.
Presently, the further research on the
optimization of MR J-T system is continued.
The objective of the is to carry out theoretical
and experimental investigations on heat
exchanger (two-phase heat transfer of multi-
component mixtures, at cryogenic
temperatures) for the MR J-T cryocooler to
analyze the effects of mixture used, operating
conditions on the performance of cryocooler.