Numerical investigation on a travelling wave thermoacoustic heat pump

Abstract

A thermoacoustic heat pump heater is a device having the ability to produce heat from acoustic power. The heat pump investigated was composed of an acoustic driver, a branched tube, and a looped tube. A porous component composed of many stacked steel screen meshes, called regenerator, was installed inside the looped tube. When an acoustic wave is supplied to the looped tube, filled with nitrogen gas at 0.5 MPa, heat pumping spontaneously occurs inside the regenerator. A numerical code was developed and tested. Then, the coefficient of performance was calculated for different temperatures by optimizing the regenerator flow channel radius and position inside the looped tube. It was found that the temperature affects considerably the regenerator optimum parameters.

Keywords

• thermoacoustic
• heat pumping
• performance
• numerical optimization