A heat-driven thermoacoustic cryocooler capable of reaching below liquid hydrogen temperature

A double-gas acoustic amplifier is introduced to couple a thermoacoustic heat engine and a two-stage pulse tube cooler in this paper. Compared with previous acoustic amplifiers, this new acoustic amplifier maintains the function of amplification for pressure amplitude. In particular, the novel acoustic amplifier with a reservoir makes it possible to install an acoustic transparent but gas blocking elastic membrane between the engine and the cooler. Thus, the engine can use nitrogen as the working gas to work at low frequency; and meanwhile, the cooler can still use helium as the working gas to maintain its high performance. With this new amplifier, the cooling temperature of a two-stage pulse tube cooler driven by an energy-focused thermoacoustic engine reached 18.7 K.