A double-acting thermoacoustic cryocooler for high temperature superconducting electric power grids

High temperature superconductors (HTSs) have brought the prospect of a revolutionary lossless electric power grid a major step closer to reality. Developing highly reliable, highly efficient, and economical cryocoolers for use with HIS devices is now an urgent necessity. In this paper, a double-acting thermoacoustic cryocooler is presented. It consists of three or six units, each composed of a thermoacoustic converter and a linear compressor. The acoustic field in the converters is determined by the number of units and by the orientation of the piston faces, which allows the convenient adjustment of the phase relationship. The specially designed expansion chamber can recover the acoustic power. With this new configuration, the coefficient of performance can exceed 0.13, a promising figure for HTS electric power grid applications. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.