A Traveling Wave Thermoacoustic Refrigerator within Room Temperature Range

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A Traveling Wave Thermoacoustic Refrigerator within Room Temperature Range

Huang, Yun / Luo, Ercang / Dai, Wei / Wu, Zhanghua

Abstract Thermoacoustic refrigerators use sound waves to generate cooling. Furthermore, they use inert gases that are friendly to the environment. Their unique working mechanism and promising future have attracted many researchers. This article focuses on the design of a traveling wave thermoacoustic refrigerator that works in the civil refrigeration range, since traveling wave refrigerators have higher efficiencies than standing wave refrigerators. According to linear thermoacoustic theory, two analytical methods, the lumped-element network and transfer matrixes, are discussed for analysis of the thermoacoustic systems. Several possible modes for achieving efficient thermoacoustic refrigeration are analyzed with the simplified lumped-element network method. Then, a feasible thermoacoustic refrigeration mode is chosen and optimized with the transfer matrix method. The goal is to achieve a relatively high cooling capacity at a temperature of 250 K. The calculation results show that, with helium, the refrigerator can have a cooling power of 80 W and achieve a COP of 2.86; this corresponds to a relative Carnot efficiency of 57%. According to this, we have constructed a refrigerator. It has achieved a no-load cooling temperature of 263 K when driven by a mechanical compressor with helium, and achieved a cooling power of 80 W at 274 K when driven by a standing wave thermoacoustic engine with nitrogen at the pressure ratio of 1.09.