Investigation of an efficient high cooling-capacity Stirling-type pulse tube refrigerator with passive rod displacer operating at 173 K

Abstract

Pulse tube refrigerator (PTR) with passive rod displacer is of great potential to realize high-efficiency refrigeration and can be a feasible substitute for the vapor compression system in ultra-low temperature cold storage. However, PTRs with passive rod displacer in that application require high efficiency and substantial cooling capacity, which still need to be developed in previous research. In this paper, a high cooling-capacity PTR with passive rod displacer operating at 173 K was designed, fabricated, and investigated. The special property of acoustic power recovery was exhibited based on an electrical circuit analogy model and energy flow analysis. The structural parameters of PTR with passive rod displacer were optimized by one-dimensional numerical software. The experimental results showed that a cooling capacity of 157.5 W at 173 K was obtained with an input electric power of 500 W. The corresponding relative Carnot efficiency reached 21.8 %. The phase difference between the displacer and piston decreased slightly from 58.1° with the increase of cooling temperature when charging pressure and operating frequency were 2.8 MPa and 65 Hz, respectively. The phase difference was determined by the operating frequency and was slightly affected by charging pressure, cooling temperature, and input electric power. Based on the validated numerical models, PTR with passive rod displacer and inertance-tube-type PTR were compared. The numerical results showed that both enthalpy and PV power enlarged at the T-junction in the PTR with passive rod displacer due to acoustic power recovery. According to the acoustic-mechanical–electrical coupling phasor diagram, the phase difference between pressure and piston displacement decreased because of the mass flow superposition at the T-junction, affecting the output capability of the linear compressor. The efficient high cooling-capacity prototype verifies that PTR with passive rod displacer has a bright future in ultra-low temperature engineering applications.