The heat exchange performance of the mixed refrigerants in the precooling cycle and the deep-cooling cycle is a key factor affecting the specific energy consumption of the hydrogen liquefaction system.A comparison is made between two types of precooling processes:mixed refrigerant precooling+N2 secondary refrigeration,and mixed refrigerant precooling alone.Simulation and selection are conducted through using Aspen Hysys chemical engineering software to preferentially choose the mixed refrigerant precooling process,which is then combined with the Brayton deep-cooling cycle for a hydrogen liquefaction load of 290 t/d.Subsequently,the process is optimized by means of MATLAB’s genetic algorithm while taking specific energy consumption as target,and simulation calculation is performed for specific energy consumption and exergy efficiency,and the system performance is also evaluated.Results indicate that using the mixed refrigerant precooling alone is superior to using the mixed refrigerant precooling+N2 secondary refrigeration process.After the optimization,the minimum temperature difference of the heat exchanger can be reduced to approximately 1℃.The hot and cold composite curve of the precooling section has already shown good matching before the optimization,and the gap between the hot and cold composite curves of the deep-cooling section is significantly narrowed after the optimization.The specific energy consumption of the system after the optimization is 6.414 kWh per kg of liquid H2,and the total exergy loss is 53 704.94 kW,which 12.1% and 9.4% respectively less than those before the optimization.
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