Investigation On Output Characteristic Of A Gas-burning Thermoacoustical Engine & Design Of A Stirling 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. Refrigeration system driven by thermoacoustic engine has promising future in application of cryogenics and air-conditioning.The history of thermoacoustics is reviewed, followed by explanation of thermoacoustic effects of fundamental theories. Also two important energy forms of thermoacoustic system: acoustic power and total power are discussed in details.After the introduction of experimental installation, the output characteristic of a gas-burning thermoacoustical engine is researched. With filling pressure and heating power of 2.19MPa and 19kW respectively, the maximum output power 250.3W is obtained when nitrogen gas is used. It is the first time to use two reservoirs (the volume is 3035ml and 750ml respectively) to get acoustic power in different position on the thermoacoustic engine. The output power totals 170.8W (getting 109.2W on the bigger one, 61.6W on the other) which is larger than the situation using only one reservoir. It proved the possibility of getting more acoustic power by using more reservoirs.The design principles and methods of pulse tube refrigerator are summarized. A Stirling pulse tube refrigerator driven by thermoacoustic engine is designed based on acode——REGEN3.2. The refrigerator could get large refrigeration capacity at thetemperature when natural gas is liquefied.