Travelling-wave thermoacoustic high-temperature heat pump for industrial waste heat recovery

Zhao Yang, Yang Zhuo, Luo Ercang and Zhou Yuan

Energy, 2014, vol. 77, issue C, 397-402

Abstract: Many industrial processes need steam at temperatures from 100 to 200 °C, normally produced by directly heating water via coal, natural gas or oil combustion. Nevertheless, large amounts of unused heat below 100 °C are wasted in other industrial processes. In principle, a high-temperature heat pump capable of using the industrial waste heat can provide steam above 100 °C. However, until now, efficient and reliable heat pump technology for the application is not available. In this paper, a novel TWTAHP (travelling-wave thermoacoustic heat pump) is presented to meet this requirement, which can potentially solve the problems occurring in conventional vapour-compression heat pump such as high discharge temperatures, high pressure ratio, and low efficiency. This system comprises three linear pressure wave generators which are coupled with three heat pumps into one single closed loop. Theoretically, this system is able to complete the thermoacoustic conversion with a much higher efficiency. The theoretical simulations were performed at varied waste-heat temperatures (40−70 °C) and different hot-end temperatures (120−150 °C). The computing results show that this new heat pump system has a high relative Carnot efficiency of about 50%–60%. In using a reliable linear compressor and a thermoacoustic heat pump with no-moving parts, this technology has an inherent potential for high reliability. Therefore, it is believed that the travelling-wave thermoacoustic heat pump is an enabling technology with good prospects in efficiently harvesting industrial waste heat.

Keywords: High-temperature heat pump; Thermoacoustic; Travelling-wave; Double-acting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544214010792
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:77:y:2014:i:c:p:397-402

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2014.09.023

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 ().