Ronakkumar Patel
Department of Mechanical Engineering, A. D. Patel Institute of Technology (ADIT), New V. V Nagar, Gujarat-388121, India
Vishal Singh
Department of Mechanical Engineering, A. D. Patel Institute of Technology, New Vallabh Vidyanagar-388121, India
Mitesh Shah
Department of Mechanical Engineering, A. D. Patel Institute of Technology, New Vallabh Vidyanagar-388121, India
Thermoacoustic refrigerator is an innovative solution for modern era problem of refrigerators by replacing harmful refrigerants with inert gases like helium, argon, xenon, oxygen and nitrogen. This system has stack as a regenerator, which eliminates the moving component of refrigerator system, i.e. compressor. Stack geometry plays a vital role in thermoacoustic refrigerator performance, hence a material-specific property can only be used in the stack. Some other factors like stack geometry and surface of stack also play a role in the performance. In many cases of parallel plate stack and spiral stack, the problem of blockage was observed due to use of poor stack manufacturing technique. In the present work design of stack is exhaustively carried out for the different components e.g. 3D printed stack, resonator tube. Present work also focuses on the numerical simulation using Delta EC (Design Environment for Low-Amplitude ThermoAcoustic Energy Conversion) for newly designed thermoacoustic refrigerator with 3D printed stack with Polylactic Acid (PLA). Simulations were carried out for temperature difference between hot and cold heat exchanger and frequency with varying cooling load conditions. 3D printed stack with PLA material gives comparable results with Mylar. Experimental set up has been developed and analysed for the design thermoacoustic refrigerator.