Optimized Cooling Power of a Vuilleumier Refrigerator with Limited Regeneration

Vuilleumier refrigerators provide cooling power by utilizing a heat source at temperatures above the ambient. This is particularly helpful in situations where waste heat is available and other power sources are limited. Vuilleumier refrigerators come in different technical configurations; here we an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEnergies (Basel) Vol. 14; no. 24; p. 8376
Main Authors Khodja, Abdellah, Paul, Raphael, Fischer, Andreas, Hoffmann, Karl Heinz
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.12.2021
Subjects
Cold
Configuration management
Control theory
Cooling
cooling power optimization
endoreversible thermodynamics
Engines
Heat
heat-only operation
Optimization
piston motion optimization
Pistons
Power sources
Refrigerators
Regenerators
Thermodynamics
vuilleumier refrigerator
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Summary:Vuilleumier refrigerators provide cooling power by utilizing a heat source at temperatures above the ambient. This is particularly helpful in situations where waste heat is available and other power sources are limited. Vuilleumier refrigerators come in different technical configurations; here we analyze the thermodynamic performance of a configuration utilizing two displacer pistons with integrated regenerators. More specifically, we optimize the cooling power by optimizing the piston movement for a range of operation speeds. The optimization is based on the AS motion class for cyclic dynamics and uses an endoreversible model for the refrigerator. Our focus is on the influence of the regeneration extent present, and we find performance gains of about 17% for high regeneration extent and of about 28% for lower regeneration extent.
ISSN:1996-1073
1996-1073
DOI:10.3390/en14248376