Design of a large-capacity multi-piston pulse tube cryocooler

Abstract

ercial high temperature superconductors, two designs for a pulse tube cryocooler have been developed. In the first design, three parallel-arrayed inertance pulse tube cryocoolers are driven by one twinopposed linear compressor. It is hard for this system to obtain a relative Carnot efficiency of higher than 25%. In the other design, it includes three pulse tube cryocoolers and three linear compressors. The inertance tube and reservoir of each pulse tube cryocooler are omitted. The compression chamber of each compressor is connected in series through a pulse tube cryocooler to the expansion chamber of another compressor. With this configuration, the acoustic work coming out of the secondary water-cooled heat exchanger can be recovered and it is much easier for the pulse tube cryocooler to obtain better acoustic field, so the relative Carnot efficiency of this system could be higher than 35%. It should be one of the best candidates for the cryocooler in high temperature superconductor power grid.