Coefficient of performance under optimized figure of merit in minimally nonlinear irreversible refrigerator

We apply the model of minimally nonlinear irreversible heat engines developed by Izumida and Okuda (EPL, 97 (2012) 10004) to refrigerators. The model assumes extended Onsager relations including a new nonlinear term accounting for dissipation effects. The bounds for the optimized regime under an appropriate figure of merit and the tight-coupling condition are analyzed and successfully compared with those obtained previously for low-dissipation Carnot refrigerators in the finite-time thermodynamics framework. Besides, we study the bounds for the nontight-coupling case numerically. We also introduce a leaky low-dissipation Carnot refrigerator and show that it serves as an example of the minimally nonlinear irreversible refrigerator, by calculating its Onsager coefficients explicitly. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2013