EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF NON-RESONANT SELF CIRCULATING HEAT TRANSFER LOOP USED IN THERMOACOUSTIC-STIRLING ENGINES

Abstract

A novel heat transfer loop for thermoacoustic‐Stirling engines which could substitute for a traditional heat exchanger was developed. This new heat transfer loop uses a pair of check valves to transform oscillating flow into steady flow that allows the oscillating flow system’s own working gas to go through a physically remote high‐temperature or cold‐temperature heat source. Since the early principle experiment has achieved success, this paper explores the real operating performance of this heat transfer loop by coupling with thermoacoustic‐Stirling engine. Furthermore, a new type water‐cooled heat exchanger was developed in this paper to deduce the extra acoustic power dissipation. In addition, the influence of two kinds of check valves the heat transfer loop was discussed in this paper. The loop with 0.1 mm valve disc thickness shows that the heat transfer capacity is higher than the traditional heat exchanger. Our experiments have demonstrated its feasibility and flexibility for practical applications.