Performance of mixed refrigerant cascade refrigerator for cooling a space simulation chamber

A mixed refrigerant cascade (MRC) refrigeration system has been developed to replace a conventional two-stage cascade refrigeration system for the cooling of space simulation chambers. A fast cool down of the refrigerator to 193K within a time of 16 min is achieved. The details of the system developed and its performance characteristics such as cool down, heat load and exergy efficiency with different mixtures will be presented in this paper.