Experimental Investigation on a Linear-compressor Driven Travelling-wave Thermoacoustic Heat Pump

Abstract

Heat pump system, offering economical alternatives in recovering waste heat from different sources for using in various industrial, commercial and residential applications, is considered to be a very environmentally-friendly heat and power transfer system. In this paper, to solve the problems of traditional vapour compression heat pump working in unconventional conditions, a novel TWTAHP (travelling-wave thermoacoustic heat pump) is presented to meet the requirement of working in ultra-low temperature. Base on the theoretical simulation and structure optimization, an experimental apparatus for preliminary test has been built, which is only one single independent unit from the whole loop of the TWTAHP system. The results show that the simulation and the testing results were agreeable as expected. Under the -20°C environment temperature and the 50°C heating temperature, we could obtain a maximal COPh (heating COP) of 2.1 and 260W heating capacity for one unit by consuming acoustic power less than 200W. Furthermore, a COPh above 3.0 could be achieved when the ambient temperature was raised to 0°C.