Acoustic recovery of lost power in pulse tube refrigerators

In an efficient Stirling-cycle cryocooler, the cold piston or displacer recovers power from the gas. This power is dissipated into heat in the orifice of an orifice pulse tube refrigerator, decreasing system efficiency. Recovery of some of this power in a pulse tube refrigerator, without sacrificing the simplicity and reliability inherent in a system with no cold moving parts, is described in this paper. In one method of such power recovery, the hot ends of both the regenerator and the pulse tube are connected to the front of the piston driving the refrigerator. Experimental data is presented demonstrating this method using a thermoacoustic driver instead of a piston driver. Control of time-averaged mass flux through the refrigerator is crucial to this power recovery, lest the refrigerator’s cooling power be overwhelmed by a room-temperature mass flux. Two methods are demonstrated for control of mass flux: a barrier method, and a hydrodynamic method based on turbulent irreversible flow. At −55 °C, the refrigerator provided cooling with 9% of the Carnot coefficient of performance. With straightforward improvements, similar refrigerators should achieve efficiencies greater than those of prior pulse tube refrigerators and prior standing-wave thermoacoustic refrigerators, while maintaining the advantages of no moving parts.