Compared to the pure refrigerants, the zeotropic refrigerant mixtures have the obvious temperature glide during phase change. Therefore, the Lorenz cycle can be approached with this special attribute. By analysing the heat transfer in the counter flow heat exchanger, a new evaluation method for zeotropic refrigerant mixtures based on the variance of the temperature difference between the refrigerant and heat transfer fluid (HTF) is proposed in this paper. For approaching to the Lorenz cycle and perfect glide matching, the zeotropic mixture which has smaller variance in the heat exchanger should be chosen in the refrigeration cycle. The variance of temperature difference is affected by two factors which are the temperature difference between the inlet and outlet of HTF and the linear relationship between the refrigerant temperature and enthalpy, respectively. The smallest variance of the zeotropic refrigerant can be obtained by setting the temperature difference of HTF to be the optimal temperature difference. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.