Sustainable heat-driven sound cooler with super-high efficiency
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PUBLIC SUMMARY
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Desiging a super-efficient heat-driven thermaocosutic refrigerator.
Achieving an unprecedented coefficient of performance of 1.34.
The system exhibits bright prospect in heat-driven room-temperature refrigeration.
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ABSTRACT
Sustainable cooling technologies with high efficiency are increasingly vital in modern life. Characterized by eco-friendly working substances and no mechanical moving components, the heat-driven thermoacoustic refrigerator (HDTR) makes it a really sustainable choice. However, its practical application has been hindered by its relatively low efficiency. This work reports a breakthrough in thermally-powered sound cooling technology: a super-efficient HDTR. The system incorporates an innovative configuration, ensuring efficient acoustic power matching between the engine and cooler units at high heating temperatures, thereby significantly boosting efficiency. Our experimental findings are exhilarating: the HDTR achieves an unprecedented coefficient of performance (COP) of 1.34 at heating, ambient, and cooling temperatures of 550 °C, 35 °C, and 7 °C, respectively, along with a cooling power of 2.37 kW. To the best of our knowledge, under approximate temperature spans, this COP surprisingly increases by 240% compared to the best result previously reported for HDTRs without using the novel configuration. These results represent a significant advancement in HDTR technology, showing a tremendous potential of the HDTR as an emerging, sustainable cooling technology, particularly for heat-driven room-temperature refrigeration applications. -
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REFERENCES
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Xiao L., Luo K., Wu. Z., et al., (2024). Sustainable heat-driven sound cooler with super-high efficiency. The Innovation Energy 1(2): 100027. https://doi.org/10.59717/j.xinn-energy.2024.100027
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Xiao L., Luo K., Wu. Z., et al., (2024). Sustainable heat-driven sound cooler with super-high efficiency. The Innovation Energy 1(2): 100027. https://doi.org/10.59717/j.xinn-energy.2024.100027
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Figure 1.
(A) Diagram of the traditional direct-coupling HDTR. (B) Diagram of the novel HDTR with bypass configuration.
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Figure 2.
(A) COP comparison between the proposed novel HDTR and the direct-coupling HDTR without bypass (simulation results). (B) Theoretical and simulated results of bypass proportion
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Figure 3.
Experimental setup of a three-unit looped HDTR system based on the proposed novel configuration. The system consists of three identical subunits, which constitute a looped topology. Each subunit mainly includes an engine unit, a cooler unit, a bypass tube, two TBTs (TBT1 and TBT2), and a liquid resonator. Particularly, a ball valve is installed in the bypass tube to adjust the bypass flowrate to achieve an excellent performance. In addition, the elastic membranes are employed to suppress the DC flow and liquid surface instability.
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Figure 4.
Cooling performance of the present system under different heating temperatures Th.
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Figure 5.
COP comparison between the present work and other previously reported heat-driven refrigerators (absorption refrigerators, adsorption refrigerators, and thermoacoustic refrigerators) for room-temperature refrigeration (the ambient temperatures range from 35 °C – 50 °C, and cooling temperatures vary from 0 °C – 15 °C) The temperature span is the difference between ambient temperature and cooling temperature.
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