Design, manufacturing and testing of a compact thermoacoustic refrigerator

•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 g...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied thermal engineering 2021-05, Vol.189, p.116705, Article 116705
Main Authors: Ramadan, Islam A., Bailliet, Hélène, Poignand, Gaëlle, Gardner, David
Format: Article
Language:English
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
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Summary:•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.
ISSN:1359-4311
1873-5606
DOI:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2021.116705