Energy and exergy analysis of acoustically-resonant double-acting traveling wave thermoacoustic heat engine

Based on the classic thermoacoustic theory, this paper presents a comprehensive investigation of the acoustically-resonant double-acting traveling wave thermoacoustic heat engine through exergy analysis. The exergy destruction is split into internally lost exergy and externally lost exergy, while internally lost exergy mainly includes heat leak, viscous loss, imperfect heat transfer loss, and coupling loss with viscosity and imperfect heat transfer. The distribution of exergy destruction for a typical acoustically-resonant double-acting traveling wave thermoacoustic engine is researched in detail, whose exergy efficiency reaches 55.7%. The results demonstrate that most exergy destruction is caused by regenerator and resonator. Most of the lost exergy in the resonance tube is caused by viscosity, while the viscous loss just accounts for a little part in the regenerator. © 2016, Science Press. All right reserved.