Title: Analysis and optimisation of a cascade active magnetic regenerative refrigeration system

Authors: Hadi Ganjehsarabi; Ibrahim Dincer; Ali Gungor

Addresses: Faculty of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Erzincan University, Erzincan 24100, Turkey ' Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, 2000 Simcoe Street North, Oshawa, Ontario L1H 7K4, Canada ' Faculty of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ege University, TR-35100 Bornova, Izmir, Turkey

Abstract: In this paper, comprehensive thermodynamic analysis and optimisation of a cascade active magnetic regenerative refrigeration system are performed. A parametric study is conducted to investigate the effects of various design parameters on the cycle performance through energy and exergy efficiencies. A multi-objective optimisation method based on a fast and elitist non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm is applied to determine the best design parameters for the system. Two objective functions utilised in the optimisation study are the total cost rate of the system and the system exergy efficiency. The total cost rate of the system is minimised while the cycle exergy efficiency is maximised using an evolutionary algorithm. To provide insight, the Pareto frontier is shown for a multi-objective optimisation. The results show that exergy efficiency could be increased by 14.53% using exergy-based optimisation and the cost could be reduced by 12% using the cost-based optimisation.

Keywords: AMR cycle; exergy efficiency; energy efficiency; genetic algorithms; NSGA-II; magnetic refrigeration; multi-objective optimisation; magnetic regenerative refrigeration.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEX.2016.075601

International Journal of Exergy, 2016 Vol.19 No.2, pp.143 - 160

Received: 03 Sep 2014
Accepted: 06 Feb 2015
Published online: 30 Mar 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article