Ultra-efficient thermoacoustically-driven refrigeration: Detailed mechanism and optimization analysis

Lei Xiao, Zhanghua Wu and Ercang Luo

Energy, 2025, vol. 324, issue C

Abstract: Thermoacoustically-driven refrigerator (TDR) represents a new sustainable cooling technology with advantages of environmentally friendliness, no moving components, and long life. However, the relatively low efficiency hinders its extensive application. This study deeply investigates a new TDR with bypass exhibiting a significantly higher coefficient of performance (COP). The efficient operation mechanism is initially comprehensively explored, including the analyses of power-matching principle, acoustic field and loss distribution. It is revealed that the bypass design overcomes the constraint of heating temperature, thus remarkably improving efficiency. Employing a dimensionless matching factor can estimate the power-matching degree under given conditions. A better acoustic field explains the system's higher COP, mainly attributed to larger dimensionless acoustic impedance amplitude in the regenerators. Subsequently, we design bypass-typed TDR systems for different working gases and investigate their performance at high heating temperatures. At standard air-conditioning cooling conditions, the present systems display ultra-high COPs of 3.24, 2.97, and 2.61 at a heating temperature of 1226 °C with working gas of hydrogen, helium, and nitrogen, respectively; further optimization yields a maxixum of 3.29 for hydrogen, exhibiting bright prospect in heat-driven refrigeration. This work provides deeper insights on the efficient operation mechanism of the TDR with bypass, expands its application to higher heating temperatures and further enhances its COP to ultra-high values.

Keywords: Thermoacoustically-driven refrigerator; Ultra-high efficiency; Bypass configuration; Eco-friendly working gas (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544225015981
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:324:y:2025:i:c:s0360544225015981

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2025.135956

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().