Experimental and CFD studies of a thermoacoustic apparatus

Abstract

This paper reports a study of a thermoacoustic system by both experimentation and simulation. A small scale thermoacoustic refrigerator prototype was built for experimentation purposes. In addition, a two-dimensional transient thermoacoustic model was solved by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. In experimentation, a small thermoacoustic refrigerator (TAR) rig operated at a frequency of 133.45 Hz was built and the system was tested using two different types of stack; acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and a stainless-steel scrubber. At atmospheric pressure and a relatively low frequency, a small temperature drop is recorded. Similar result was obtained using a simple CFD model that was designed based on the actual operating parameters of the experimental rig with ABS as a stack. The study shows that thermoacoustic principles can be used as a sustainable and green alternative technology for a refrigerator.