Estudo de sistema de refrigeração termoacústica

Abstract

This work aims to make the experimental study of a thermoacoustic refrigerator in order to observe the essential parameters for its operation. The thermoacoustic refrigeration is a technology which emerged in the 1970s as an alternative solution to classic refrigeration systems that work with steam compression. It has many advantages over traditional technologies in terms of wear, maintenance and pollution and this makes it an economically interesting research topic. There are already many efficient devices in the area of industrial refrigeration for food and natural gas liquefaction and in the area of embedded systems. The operation of such devices consists in converting an acoustic power into a thermal power through the passage of a sound wave throughout a porous structure known as stack. Inside this structure, the gas particles vibrate by effecting a thermodynamic cycle able to recover heat from one side of the stack and supplying it to the other side. Thus, the part is cooling on one side and heating on the other by accumulation of heat. So the goal is to recover the low temperature from the cold side, however this has an influence on the efficiency of the system by heating the cold side. Also cooling the hot side of the machine seems to be a solution to keep a temperature low enough on the cold side. To verify this connection between these two temperatures is the objective of the present study.