Design, manufacturing and testing of a compact thermoacoustic refrigerator

• Published in: Applied thermal engineering Vol. 189; p. 116705
• Main Authors: Ramadan, Islam A., Bailliet, Hélène, Poignand, Gaëlle, Gardner, David
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 05.05.2021; Elsevier BV; Elsevier
• Subjects: Acoustics; Automobiles; Design and manufacturing; Electric vehicles; Engineering Sciences; Fluids mechanics; Heat exchangers; Heat transfer; Mechanics; Parameters; Performance indices; Rare gases; Refrigeration; Refrigerator; Refrigerators; Thermal design; Thermics; Thermoacoustic; Thermoacoustics; Vibrations; Refrigerator; Design and manufacturing; Thermoacoustic; Thermal design
• ISSN: 1359-4311; 1873-5606
• DOI: 10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2021.116705

•A novel compact thermoacoustic refrigerator is designed, manufactured and tested.•A method for thermal design of heat exchangers for thermoacoustic devices is proposed.•Comparison between the measurements and DeltaEC design model results are performed. Thermoacoustic refrigeration technology is a green alternative for the conventional refrigeration system in vehicles. The former uses environmentally friendly inert gases whereas the latter uses chemical refrigerants that can have severe impacts on the environment. In order to apply thermoacoustic technology in the automobile industry, the size and the weight of plausible thermoacoustic refrigerators should be decreased. The design of a new compact thermoacoustic refrigerator is described in this study. This thermoacoustic refrigerator uses two electroacoustic components and one thermoacoustic core. The technical details of design, fabrication, and testing processes are presented. A methodology for thermal design of the heat exchangers is proposed and validated by measurements. The effects of different parameters, such as the driver piston displacement amplitude, the phase shift between the voltage signals applied to the electroacoustic components, and the cold side temperature on the performance indices of the refrigerator are investigated. The performance of the prototype is compared with the performance calculated by the DeltaEC design model. The overall agreement between the calculated and the measured performance parameters is fair, but further insight into the temperature distributions reveals that non-linear effects yield discrepancies between the model and the experimental results. A preliminary discussion of the origin of these discrepancies is proposed.