مشخصات پژوهش

Hydrogen gas is a clean and renewable fuel that is gaining interest worldwide. However, its transportation and storage present challenges that necessitate liquefaction. However, there are concerns regarding the inefficiency and high costs associated with liquefaction systems. To solve these problems, two proposed hydrogen liquefaction systems are derived from the conventional Claude cycle to improve performance. In both systems, unlike the conventional Claude liquefaction systems, which use one expander between the liquefaction heat exchangers, two additional expanders are employed, one in the extraction flow of the compressor outlet before the initial liquefaction heat exchanger and another before the first expansion valve. Also, in the second proposed system, to lower the system’s overall power consumption, the thermal energy of the stream exiting the compressors was utilized to generate power. In the following, energy, exergy, and exergy-economic analyses are conducted on all three systems. The results indicate that the proposed systems exhibit a superior coefficient of performance and exergy efficiency compared to the Claude system, as much as 86 % and 100 % for the first and second systems, respectively. The exergy-economic analysis results indicate that the liquefaction cost rates of the first and second proposed systems are 46.32 % and 49.13 % lower than that of the Claude system, respectively. The parametric analysis results indicate that the two proposed systems outperform the Claude system in terms of performance and cost across all compressor pressure ratios.