Pulsation damping of the reciprocating compressor with Helmholtz resonator

Abstract

Research presented in this paper investigated the mounting of a Helmholtz resonator near the valve chamber of a reciprocating compressor to attenuate the gas pulsation in the valve chamber as well as the pipeline downstream. Its attenuation characteristics were simulated with the plane wave theory together with the transfer matrix method, and the damping effect was checked by comparing the pressure pulsation levels before and after mounting the resonator. The results show that the Helmholtz resonator was effective in attenuating the gas pulsation in the valve chamber and piping downstream, and the pulsation level was decreased by 40% in the valve chamber and 30% at maximum in the piping downstream. The damping effect of the resonator was sensitive to its resonant frequency, and various resonators working simultaneously didn’t interfere with each other. When two resonators were mounted in parallel, with resonant frequencies equal to the second and fourth harmonic frequencies, the pressure pulsation components corresponding to the resonant frequencies were remarkably decreased at the same time, while the pulsation levels at other harmonic frequencies kept almost unchanged. After a series of simulations and experiments a design criterion of chock tube and volume parameter has been proposed for the targeted frequencies to be damped. Furthermore, the frequency-adjustable Helmholtz resonator which was applied to the variable speed compressor was investigated.