High-Efficiency Heat-Driven Acoustic Cooling Engine With No Moving Parts

Abstract

This invention describes a new geometry for a heat driven thermo acoustic prime mover (i.e. acoustic motor) and its application to a thermo acoustic refrigerator and to an electricity generator. The heat driven acoustic refrigerator has no moving parts, and is thus extremely reliable, simple, and cheap to manufacture. Unlike previous heat driven acoustic cooling engines, it has good efficiency and compactness and is easy to start, avoiding destructively high temperatures upon start-up. The cooling engine is saleable over an extremely wide range of cooling capacities from integrated circuit and sensor cooling to building air-conditioning. The electricity generating engine has modest efficiency, but may be attractive in remote applications where high-reliability or low cost or low environmental noise or solar powering is important. The generator is likely to be most attractive in capacities of a few kW to below 100 W where a tiny engine would be impractical using other technologies.