Investigation On Thermoacoustically Driven Pulse Tube Refrigerator

Thermoacoustic engine is a new type of engine, which is based on the thermoacoustic effect. Without any moving parts and with inert gas as working fluid, it has many advantages over traditional engines, such as simplicity, reliability, long non-maintenance operation and pollution free. Pulse-tube refrigeration driven by thermoacoustic prime has promising application in gas liquefaction. And advances have been achieved in air-conditioning and refrigeration with thermoacoustic refrigerator. In sum, the study of thermoacoustic engine is now in the focus of refrigeration field.After a detailed review of the history of the research and developments of thermoacoustics, the main theories of thermoacoustics, the design principles and methods of pulse tube refrigerator are summarized respectively. Based on a code—REGEN3.2, developed at NIST, USA, a thermoacoustically driven pulse tube refrigerator is simulated and effects of different regenerator dimension are analyzed. Then a pulse tube refrigerator is manufactured based on the simulation. In the preliminary experiment, the pulse tube cooler reached a refrigeration temperature as low as 117.5 K and 83.5 K by using nitrogen and helium as the working gas, respectively, which is below the critical tempreture of nitrogen for the former.