Abstract:
Objective This paper designs a hydrogen liquefaction process with mixed refrigerant pre-cooling and dual-pressure Claude cycle sub-cooling to reduce the specific energy consumption (SEC). The process not only introduces a solar absorption refrigeration system to reduce the SEC of the process, but also designs the refrigerant to cool at different pressures to improve cooling efficiency.
Method The process was simulated and optimized using HYSYS software and particle swarm optimization algorithm, and energy analysis, heat exchange analysis and exergy analysis of the process were performed.
Result The SEC of the optimized process was 5.676 9 kW·h/kg, which was 14.89% lower than that before optimization. The exergy efficiency was 56.04%, which was 19.28% higher than that before optimization, which indicated that the optimized process had a high energy efficiency. Furthermore, the total exergy loss of the process was 69 496 kW, which was 18.04% lower than that before optimization.
Conclusion Compared with other liquefaction processes, the designed hydrogen liquefaction process not only has a high liquefaction performance, but also improves the utilization of renewable energy, which is in line with development trend of the hydrogen liquefaction process.