Suitability on refrigerants of refrigeration system for ice rink in Winter Olympic Stadium

In response to the requirements of the sustainable development strategy of the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee, this paper mainly studies the suitability of three refrigerants (R507, R448A/449A and R744) of refrigeration system for ice rink of the ice sports gymnasium of the Beijing Olympic Winter Games. Firstly, the key selecting rules for refrigerants at historical technology development stages and the low GWP alternative refrigerants at current stage are researched, and the compliance of the three refrigerants is defined according to the requirements of international conventions such as Montreal agreement and Kigali Amendment. According to the demand of ice rink refrigeration system in the ice sports gymnasium, the theoretical cycle and thermo-physical properties of three refrigerants are analysed. Based on the indexes of refrigerant naturalness and total equivalent warming impact (TEWI) etc., the three refrigerants are comprehensively evaluated from the aspects of safety, environmental protection, refrigeration performance, economy and life cycle impact by using fuzzy analytic hierarchy process. It is pointed out that the environmental performance of refrigerant R744 is significantly superior to that of refrigerant R507 and R448A /R449A. If the technical measures of two-stage compression are considered, the system energy efficiency of refrigeration cycle for refrigerant R744 is higher, and its comprehensive evaluation is the best.