1. Throttling effect refrigeration capacity: Air with high pressure entering the air separation unit expands after passing through throttling valves, pipelines, equipment, and other devices to reduce pressure. Usually, the throttling process will cause a decrease in temperature, and the ability of a gas to carry away heat is the amount of heat that a low-pressure gas can carry away when it returns to the same inlet temperature when leaving the device. This indicates that at the same temperature, gases with high pressure have less energy (enthalpy) than gases with low pressure, and the difference in energy (enthalpy) between the two is the amount of heat that can be absorbed, which is called throttling effect cooling capacity.
2. Expansion mechanism cooling capacity: When a gas with high pressure expands through an expansion machine, the gas drives the impeller to rotate and outputs work to the outside, resulting in a decrease in the energy (enthalpy) of the gas itself and a significant decrease in temperature. Its ability to take away heat is the energy that recovers from heat absorption to before expansion. Therefore, the difference in energy (enthalpy) before and after the expansion of the expander is the cooling capacity of the expansion mechanism.
3. The refrigeration capacity provided by the refrigerator: Air separation equipment using molecular sieve purification often uses the low-temperature working fluid of the refrigerator to pre cool the air, in order to improve the adsorption purification effect. This is the cooling capacity provided by the external air separation equipment, which refers to the heat carried away by the chilled water from the air. It can reduce the required throttling effect and expansion mechanism cooling capacity.
