A high performance thermoacoustic

Stirling-engine

M.E.H. Tijani
S. Spoelstra

Published in Journal of Applied Physics, Volume 110, 093519 1-6, 2011

ECN-W--11-051 NOVEMBER 2011

 JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS 110, 093519 (2011)

A high performance thermoacoustic engine

M. E. H. Tijania) and S. Spoelstra
Energy research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN), PO Box 1, 1755 ZG Petten, The Netherlands
(Received 7 April 2011; accepted 8 October 2011; published online 10 November 2011)
In thermoacoustic systems heat is converted into acoustic energy and vice versa. These systems use
inert gases as working medium and have no moving parts which makes the thermoacoustic
technology a serious alternative to produce mechanical or electrical power, cooling power, and
heating in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way. A thermoacoustic Stirling heat engine is
designed and built which achieves a record performance of 49% of the Carnot efficiency. The
design and performance of the engine is presented. The engine has no moving parts and is made up
of few simple components. V C 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3658872]

I. INTRODUCTION pressure and a low gas velocity and thus a high acoustic im-
pedance. This reduces the viscous losses in the regenerator.8
An engine extracts heat from a high-temperature source,
They also reduced the gas streaming to a minimum level by
converts part of it into work and rejects the other part to a
using a jet-pump.6,7 However, up to date all the attempts
low-temperature sink as illustrated in Fig. 1. First law of
done by different thermoacoustic research groups to improve
thermodynamics states that in steady state Qh ¼ Ql þ W and
or to reproduce this performance failed.
the second law of thermodynamics states that the maximal
The aim of this paper is to present a study of a thermoa-
fraction of Qh that can be converted into work is (1  Tl=Th)
coustic Stirling-engine that achieves a record performance of
which is always lower than 1. This fraction is called the Car-
49% of the Carnot efficiency. The design, development, and
not efficiency.
performance measurements of the cooler will be presented.
Conventional engines like internal combustion engines,
The remaining of this paper is organized as follows: Sec. II
gas turbines, and Stirling cycle engines need complex me-
is devoted to description of the engine. Section III presents
chanical parts like pistons, valves, and other mechanical ele-
the performance indicators used to characterize the engine.
ments to produce work. Thermoacoustic engines, however,
Section IV shows the measurement results. In the last section
have no moving mechanical parts. In an effort to eliminate
some conclusions are drawn.
the moving parts in Stirling systems1 and related sealing
problems, Ceperley2,3 recognized in 1979 that the time phas-
ing between the pressure and velocity of the gas in the regen- II. DESCRIPTION OF THE ENGINE
erator of a Stirling system is the same as in a traveling A schematic illustration of the high-performance
acoustic wave. This inspired Ceperley to build a thermoa- thermoacoustic Stirling-engine is shown in Fig. 2. The
coustic traveling-wave (Stirling) engine consisting simply of engine consists mainly of a torus-shaped section attached to
a regenerator and two heat exchangers placed in a looped a quarter-wavelength acoustic resonator. The resonator
tube. However, this first thermoacoustic Stirling engine did
not produce acoustic power due to the high viscous losses in
the regenerator caused by high gas velocity. Additionally, the
topology of the looped tube caused a streaming of gas which
created an undesirable heat leak between hot side and cold
side of the regenerator.4 It is only in 1998 that the first work-
ing traveling-wave thermoacoustic engine was demonstrated
but at very low efficiency.5 The breakthrough in the develop-
ment of thermoacoustic engines was realized by Backhaus
et al.6,7 in 1999 when they developed a traveling-wave ther-
moacoustic engine that converts heat into acoustic power
with an efficiency of 30%, corresponding to 41% of the
Carnot efficiency. They solved the problems encountered by
Ceperley by placing the looped tube at the location of the
pressure antinode of a quarter-wavelength standing-wave
resonator. This location is characterized by a high acoustic

FIG. 1. Illustration of a heat engine. An engine absorbs heat Qh from a

a)
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic mail: source at a high temperature Th, converts a part of that heat into work W,
[email protected]. and rejects the remaining heat Ql to a sink at a low-temperature Tl.

0021-8979/2011/110(9)/093519/6/$30.00 110, 093519-1 C 2011 American Institute of Physics

V

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093519-2 M. E. H. Tijani and S. Spoelstra J. Appl. Phys. 110, 093519 (2011)

FIG. 2. Schematic illustration of the

thermoacoustic Stirling-engine. An aco-
ustic load is placed on the resonator to
control the power output of the engine.
The resonator and acoustic load are not
to scale. The “P’s” are Pressure sensors.

operates as a pressure vessel for the working gas and deter- namic cycle similar to the Stirling cycle.3,7 The acoustic
mines the operating resonance frequency of the system. wave takes care of the compression, displacement, expan-
Figure 3 shows the torus-shaped section which contains sion, and the timing necessary for the Stirling cycle. To keep
a first ambient heat exchanger (AHX1) to remove the the process ongoing, part of the acoustic power is fed back
rejected heat from the engine, a regenerator (REG), a hot through the feedback tube (L) to the ambient side (AHX1) of
heat exchanger (HHX) to supply heat to the engine, a ther- the regenerator to be amplified. The remainder of the acous-
mal buffer tube (TBT), a second ambient heat exchanger tic power is available as useful power at the junction to the
(AHX2), and a feedback tube (L). The gas column in TBT resonator. During the thermoacoustic cycle part of the heat
provides thermal insulation between HHX and AHX2. supplied to the HHX is converted into acoustic power and
AHX2 is not required for the operation of the engine but it is the remainder is rejected at the AHX1, similar to the engine
useful to intercept heat leaking down the TBT. in Fig. 1.
The thermoacoustic Stirling engine functions like an The thermoacoustic computer code DeltaE10 is used to
acoustic amplifier.2,3,7 The application of heat to the HHX design the engine. The engine is designed to achieve high
creates a temperature difference across the regenerator performance. In the following, a short description of the
which generates spontaneously an acoustic wave.9 The components of the engine is given with special attention
acoustic network formed by the elements in the torus section to the design improvements that have been made compared
forces the acoustic wave to propagate anti-clock wise enter- to previous designs.7 These improvements have led to
ing the regenerator via the AHX1, gets amplified by the the achievement of the high performance. It is worthwhile to
imposed temperature gradient along the regenerator, and note here that the engine achieves a higher performance
exits via the HHX. The acoustic wave is amplified by forcing than the Backhauss-Swift thermoacoustic-Stirling engine7
the helium gas in the regenerator to execute a thermody- although its smaller dimensions.

FIG. 3. (Color online) Thermoacoustic

Stirling engine. (Left) Detailed schematic
illustration of the torus section. (Right)
CAD-illustration of the torus section.
Beginning at the first ambient heat
exchanger (AHX1) and anti-clockwise
around the torus are the regenerator
(REG), the hot heat exchanger (HHX),
the thermal buffer tube (TBT), the sec-
ond ambient heat exchanger (AHX2), the
junction to the resonator, and the feed-
back tube (L).

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093519-3 M. E. H. Tijani and S. Spoelstra J. Appl. Phys. 110, 093519 (2011)

Operation conditions Feedback inertance (L)

The engine uses helium at 40 bar and an operation fre- The Backhauss-Swift thermoacoustic-Stirling engine7
quency of 130 Hz. Higher pressure and higher frequency uses separate feedback inertance and compliance7 with differ-
means higher power density and less thermo-viscous losses ent diameters. This leads to flow losses due to area changes.
in boundary layers. This problem is avoided by using a feedback tube with con-
stant diameter (L). The feedback tube combines the function
First ambient heat exchanger (AHX1) of the inertance and compliance and it is easy to construct.
The internal surface of the tube is made smooth and bends
The design of the ambient heat exchanger is of a kind are made gentle to further minimize acoustic losses.
that is more often used in thermoacoustic systems. It consists
of a cylindrical brass block containing 240 parallel channels
Acoustic network
with an inside diameter of 1.5 mm and a length of 2 cm. The
helium gas oscillates through these channels. The diameter The acoustic network formed by the torus components is
of the channels is smaller than in previous designs.7 This designed in such a way that the velocity at the ambient side
improves the heat transfer between the helium and the brass of the regenerator lags the pressure by 30 , whereas at the hot
block and leads to an increase in performance. Water flows side the velocity leads the pressure by 30 . This forms the
around the perimeter of this block to carry away the rejected ideal condition for the Stirling cycle in the regenerator.11 This
heat. condition is critical for the achievement of high performance.

Regenerator (REG) Resonator

The regenerator consists of a 6 cm long stack of 200- The quarter-wavelength resonator consists of three parts.
mesh stainless steel screens with a diameter of 4.15 cm. The The first part is made of a straight cylindrical tube with a
diameter of the screen wire is 36 lm. A volume porosity of length of 1 m and an inside diameter of 5.5 cm (2” pipe), fol-
77% and a hydraulic radius of 33 lm are deduced from the lowed by a conical shaped part that increases the inside di-
weight of the regenerator. The hydraulic radius of the regen- ameter to 16 cm over a length of 1.3 m. The last section is a
erator should be smaller than the thermal penetration depth stainless steel tube with a diameter of 16 cm and length of
of the helium gas at the prevailing conditions, to ensure good 39 cm, terminating in a cap. The large volume, formed by
thermal contact between helium gas and the regenerator ma- the last section, mimics an open end. The acoustic resonator
terial. A smaller hydraulic radius leads to a better thermal is not optimized for minimal acoustic losses.
contact but at the same time the viscous losses increase. The
design of the regenerator is therefore a compromise between Streaming
a good thermal contact between the gas and the solid matrix
and low viscous losses. The thermal penetration depth is In addition to the precautions taken to minimize the
depending on the temperature and thus varies along the re- acoustic losses due to minor-losses and turbulence, an elastic
generator. The regenerator material has been selected to membrane is placed just above the AHX1 to suppress
have a hydraulic radius that is on average 5 times smaller Gedeon streaming.4,7 Gedeon streaming is a time-averaged
than the thermal penetration depth. This value is smaller mass flux which circulates around the torus removing heat
than used in the past,7 which leads to lower viscous losses. from the hot heat exchanger and depositing it at AHX2 with-
out taking part in the thermoacoustic conversion process in
the regenerator. This causes a heat leak that seriously
Hot heat exchanger (HHX)
degrades the performance of the engine. The membrane is
The hot heat exchanger consists of a cylindrical stainless acoustically transparent but blocks completely Gedeon
steel block which contains 108 parallel holes with a diameter streaming. An elastic membrane causes less acoustic losses
of 3 mm and a length of 3 cm through which the helium gas than a jet-pump.7
oscillates. This ensures a good heat transfer from the HHX to Flow straighteners are placed in the thermal buffer tube
the helium gas. Heat is supplied by cartridge heaters, inserted at HHX and AHX2 to reduce jet-streaming in the TBZ.7 The
into the HHX block generating a maximal thermal power of measurements of the heat leak down the TBZ and intercepted
1.25 kW. The regenerator holder, HHX, and the TBT are by AHX2 show that this is only due to heat conduction
machined from one stainless steel block. through the wall and gas of the TBZ. The absence or reduc-
tion to a minimal level of the heat leak from the hot heat
Thermal buffer tube (TBT) exchanger due to Jet-streaming, Gedeon streaming, Rayleigh
streaming, and radiation has contributed to the achievement
The thermal buffer tube consists of a thin-walled cylin- of the high performance.
drical tube with a diameter of 4.2 cm which is much larger
than the thermal penetration depth of helium (0.1 mm). The
Acoustic load
tube has a length of 20 cm which is about 10 times the peak-
peak displacement of the helium gas at high acoustic ampli- The variable acoustic load, shown in Fig. 2, consists of a
tude. This makes the slug of oscillating gas long enough to 1-liter tank and an adjustable valve. The acoustic power dis-
provide good thermal insulation between HHX and AHX2. sipated in the load is a function of the valve setting.

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093519-4 M. E. H. Tijani and S. Spoelstra J. Appl. Phys. 110, 093519 (2011)

III. PERFORMANCE INDICATORS of the load respectively, b is the phase difference between p4
and p5, x is the angular frequency, Vc is the volume of the
The characterization of the performance of the engine
compliance of the load, pm is the average pressure of the gas,
requires knowledge of many quantities like temperatures,
and c is the ratio of the isobaric to isochoric specific heats.
dynamic pressures at different locations of the system, heat
The pressure transducer P4 is placed at the port of the load
powers at the hot and ambient heat exchangers, and acoustic
on the resonator. It is used for the two-microphone method
power produced by the engine. Thermocouples are used to
and to measure the acoustic power dissipated in the load.
measure the temperature at various locations of the engine.
The power measured by the two-microphone method (W 2mic )
One thermocouple is placed in the hot heat exchanger block.
is the sum of the acoustic power dissipated in the resonator
Three thermocouples are used to measure the temperature
section to the left of the midpoint of the two-microphones
through the regenerator and are centered radially: one at the  
cold side, one at the center, and one at the hot side. The axial (W res ) and the acoustic power dissipated in the load (W load ),7
temperature profile within the regenerator is used to detect   
Gedeon streaming.7 In the absence of Gedeon streaming the W 2mic ¼ W res þ W load : (5)
temperature profile is linear. Two thermocouples are used to
measure the inlet and outlet temperatures of the water cool- The two-microphone method is difficult due to its sensitivity
ing the ambient heat exchangers. Several pressure sensors to the microphone position, the phase difference, and flow
are placed throughout the system. They are indicated by “P” conditions.12 The accuracy of the two-microphone measure-
in Fig. 2. The acoustic power, produced by the engine, is ments is checked by plotting expression (6) for different
measured by the 2-microphone method7,12 using the two drive ratios. The drive ratio (dr) is the ratio of the dynamic
pressure sensors P3 and P4. The pressure sensors P4 and P5 pressure amplitude measured by P1 (antinode) and the mean
 
are used to measure the acoustic power dissipated in the pressure of the gas. The plot of W 2mic versus W load at con-
acoustic load.12 The sensors are always calibrated at the be- stant drive

ratio should be

a line of slope one and the inter-
ginning of each series measurement. cept at W load ¼ 0 gives W res . This is because W res is constant
The thermal power input to the engine from the electri- if dr is constant. Loading the engine by opening the valve of
cal heaters is given by the load causes a decrease of dr. The drive ratio is then kept

 constant by increasing the heat input Qh .
Qh ¼ VI; (1) The performance of the engine is given by
where V is the voltage across the heater and I is the current. 
The heat, extracted at the ambient heat exchangers by cool- W
g¼  ; (6)
ing water, is given by Qh
 
Qa ¼ qw cp UðTout  Tin Þ: (2) where W is the acoustic power produced by the engine
(entering the resonator) which is deduced from W 2mic by
Here is qw the density of water, cp is the specific heat, U is extrapolation using the DeltaEC model of the system. The
the volume flow rate of water, and Tin and Tout are the input Carnot efficiency of the engine is given by
and output temperatures of the water stream flowing through
the ambient heat exchanger. The volume flow rate is meas- Th  Ta
gC ¼ : (7)
ured with a turbine flow meter. Th
By reference to Fig. 2, the acoustic power flowing past
the midpoint of the two pressure sensors p3 and p4 is given Here Th is the temperature of the hot side of the regenerator
by12 measured by the thermocouple placed between HHX and re-
   generator and Ta is the average temperature of the cooling
 A d d 2
water flowing through the ambient heat exchanger. The per-
W 2mic ¼ 1 p3 p4 sin a þ p3  p24 :
2xqg Dx r 2r formance relative to Carnot is defined as the ratio
(3) g
gr ¼ : (8)
Here p3 and p4 are the amplitudes of the dynamic pressures gC
measured by the two pressure sensors, Dx is the distance The experimental results are presented for several drive
between the two transducers along the resonator, a is the ratios. The hot parts of the system are thermally insulated to
phase angle by which p3 leads p4, x is the angular frequency, minimize the heat leak to the surrounding.
qg is the average density of the gas, and d is the viscous
penetration depth.12
The acoustic power dissipated in the load is given by12 IV. RESULTS
 xVc Static measurements are first carried out to determine
W load ¼ p4 p5 sin b; (4) the static heat losses consisting of heat conduction, radiation,
2cpm
and convection from the system. The acoustic load is opened
where p4 and p5 are the amplitudes of the dynamic pressures fully to prevent the engine to start-up. Different thermal
measured at the entrance of the load and in the compliance heat powers are supplied to the hot heat exchanger and the

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093519-5 M. E. H. Tijani and S. Spoelstra J. Appl. Phys. 110, 093519 (2011)

temperatures are measured when a stationary situation is

obtained. The static measurements show that typically about
70% of the heat input is lost by conduction through the
regenerator and about 10% is lost by conduction through the
TBZ. The remaining 20% of the heat input is lost by conduc-
tion through the insulation, conduction along feed-through
like thermocouples, and radiation. The effective thermal
conductivity of the regenerator is calculated to be about
2.6 W=Km. It includes conduction through the regenerator
screens as well as conduction through the surrounding tube.
This relatively large number is caused by conduction through
the wall of the regenerator holder. The wall thickness at that
location is 3 mm.
The first dynamic measurements with the engine and FIG. 5. (Color online) Acoustic power measured with the two microphone
without membrane show that an appreciable amount of heat method as a function of the power dissipated in the acoustic load. The meas-
is leaking from the HHX to AHX2 which is much larger than urements are performed for several drive ratios. The solid lines are linear fits
what would be caused by heat conduction down the TBZ, to data. For all drive ratio’s the slope is about 1.
through gas and wall. The analysis of the temperature profile
drive ratios. The graph also includes a measurement point at
along the regenerator shows that it deviates from linear. This
a drive ratio of 8.14%. An important increase is recorded as
is an evidence for the presence of Gedeon streaming.4,7
function of the drive ratio. At th ¼ 510  C for example the
Figure 4 shows an example of the temperature profile in the
performance is 20% for a drive ratio of 3% while at 7% the
regenerator for a drive ratio of about 4% with and without
performance is 30%. According to the linear approximation
membrane. In the rest of this paper all the measurements are
of thermoacoustics, the efficiency would not depend on drive
done with a membrane placed at the AHX1.
ratio. However, loss mechanisms like heat conduction and
To check the accuracy of the acoustic power measured
heat convection do not scale with the square of the drive ra-
by the two-microphone method W_ 2mic is plotted versus W_ load
tio, as the acoustics does. Therefore, the loss mechanisms
for several drive ratio’s in Fig. 5. The solid lines are linear
become less important at higher drive ratios, leading to a
fits to experimental data. For all drive ratios, the slope is
higher efficiency. Increasing the drive ratio even further
about 1 which gives confidence in the measurements. For the
would eventually lead to non-linear effects that degrade per-
drive ratio of 8% the engine could not be loaded, so only one
formance. It is not clear at the moment at which drive ratio
point is measured corresponding to the acoustic power dissi-
this will occur. At its most efficient operating point (drive
pated in the resonator.
ratio ¼ 8.14% and th ¼ 580  C) the engine produces 280 W
The measured thermal performance of the engine is
of acoustic power at a thermal efficiency of 32%, corre-
shown in Fig. 6. The performance increases slightly as a
sponding to 49% of Carnot efficiency. At this point, no load
function of the hot end temperature of the regenerator for all
measurements could be performed but a comparable per-
formance is also measured for a drive ratio of 7% where the
engine can be loaded. This performance is the highest per-
formance that has been measured up to date.

FIG. 4. (Color online) Temperature profile in the regenerator with and with-
out membrane for a drive ratio of 4%. The lines are only guides to the eye.
Without membrane the temperature profile in the regenerator is not linear
indicating the existence of Gedeon streaming. The temperature of the axial
midpoint is lower than it would be in absence of streaming. This is due to
the flux of cold gas entering the cold end of the regenerator. The use of the FIG. 6. Measured thermal efficiency of the engine as function of the hot
membrane leads to the suppression of the Gedeon streaming as indicated by temperature for different drive ratios. The lines connecting the points are
the linear temperature profile. only to guide the eye.

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093519-6 M. E. H. Tijani and S. Spoelstra J. Appl. Phys. 110, 093519 (2011)

1
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3
A high performance thermoacoustic Stirling-engine P. H. Ceperley, J. Acoust. Soc Am. 77, 1239 (1985).
4
without moving parts is designed, built, and tested. The D. Gedeon, in Cryocoolers, edited by R. G. Ross (Plenum, New York,
1997), Vol. 9, p. 385.
engine achieved a record efficiency of 49% of the Carnot 5
T. Yazaki, A. Iwata, and T. Maekawa, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 3128
efficiency. The high performance in addition to the environ- (1998).
6
mentally friendly character, the lack of moving parts, the S. Backhaus and G. W. Swift, Nature 399, 335 (1999).
7
elegance, and low cost will make the thermoacoustic tech- S. Backhaus and G. W. Swift, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 107, 3148 (2000).
8
P. H. Ceperley, U.S. patent 4,355,517 (1982).
nology more attractive for industrial applications. 9
A. T. A. M. De Waele, J. Sound Vib. 325, 974 (2009).
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W. C. Ward and W. G. W Swift, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 95, 3671
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (1994).
11
R. Radebaugh and G. O’ Gallagher, Adv. Cryog. Eng. 51, 1919
This work has been partly funded by SenterNovem (2006).
12
(Dutch agency for sustainable development and innovation) A. M. Fusco, W. C. Ward, and G. W. Swift, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 91, 2229
(1992).
within the EOS-LT program.

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