Experimental investigation on mixed refrigerant Joule-Thomson cryocooler with flammable and non-flammable refrigerant mixtures

The mixed refrigerant Joule-Thomson (MR J-T) cryocoolers have a wide application area covering the temperature range from 80 K to 200 K. The significant advantages of the system are simplicity of its design and working reliability with high level performance. The present paper discusses the experimental results of MR J-T cooler with different flammable and non-flammable mixture compositions. The work highlights the use of pressure-enthalpy and temperature-enthalpy diagrams for these mixtures to support the experimental results. A record lowest temperature of 65 K and a cooling capacity of 6 W at 80 K are obtained for a single stage MR J-T system starting at 300 K. Further, using a mixture of minimum flammable refrigerants, temperatures below 100 K is achieved. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.