Experimental investigations of the performance of a thermoacoustic electricity generator

Abstract

This paper presents the experimental investigation of a two-stage thermoacoustic electricity generator able to convert heat at the temperature of the exhaust gases of an internal combustion into useful electricity. The novel configuration is one wavelength and consists of two identical stages. The identical stages will have out of phase acoustic wave at similar amplitudes which allows coupling a linear alternator to run in push-pull mode. The experimental set-up is 16.1 m long and runs at 54.7 Hz. The working medium is helium at 28 bar. The maximum generated electric power is 73.3 W at 5.64% thermal-to-electric efficiency. The working parameters including load resistance, mean pressure and heating power were investigated.