Reverse engineering of fluid selection for thermodynamic cycles with cubic equations of state, using a compression heat pump as example

Fluid selection for thermodynamic cycles like refrigeration cycles, heat pumps or organic Rankine cycles remains an actual topic. Generally the search for a working fluid is based on experimental approaches or on a not very systematic trial and error approach, far from being elegant. An alternative method may be a theory based reverse engineering approach, proposed and investigated here: The design process should start with an optimal process and with (abstract) properties of the fluid needed to fit into this optimal process, best described by some general equation of state and the corresponding fluid-describing parameters. These should be analyzed and optimized with respect to the defined model process, which also has to be optimized simultaneously. From this information real fluids can be selected or even synthesized which have fluid defining properties in the optimum regime like critical temperature or ideal gas capacities of heat, allowing to find new working fluids, not considered so far. The number and kind of the fluid-defining parameters is mainly based on the choice of the used EOS (equation of state). The property model used in the present work is based on the cubic Peng–Robinson equation, chosen due to its moderate numerical expense, sufficient accuracy as well as a general availability of the fluid-defining parameters for many compounds.