Characteristics of Thermoacoustic Sound Generator and Its Application to Refrigerator

Abstract

The simplified thermoacoustic sound wave generator was employed for preciously oscillatory flow in the resonance tube, and the propagated sound was converted to cold heat using a thermoacoustic sound refrigerator. This is a concept of refrigerator, without a refrigerant and moving part, which is different from conventional refrigerant cycle in present. For the thermoacoustic sound generator, ceramic honeycomb was introduced as a regenerator. When the temperature gradient of each side of the thin tube exceeded the critical temperature, the thermoacoustic sound was generated. The resonance frequency of this sound generator depends on the length of resonance tube and the diameter of a ceramic thin tube. On the other hand, the thermoacoustic sound created a low temperature field using a ceramic regenerator. In addition the resonance frequency must be match between thermoacoustic sound generator and refrigerator. The purpose of this study is to find an optimal system configuration and system condition to achieve a high performance thermoacoustic sound refrigerator with a thermoacoustic sound wave generator. The characteristics of thermoacoustic sound wave generator and refrigerator are evaluated experimentally in this paper. The performance of the thermoacoustic system is examined theoretically based on the experimental results.