Performance estimates of a helium-based

thermoacoustic-Stirling chiller
..............................................................................................................................................................

Matthew E. Poese*, Robert M. Keolian, Robert W.M. Smith, Steven L. Garrett

and Eric C. Mitchell
Applied Research Laboratory, The Pennsylvania State University, PO Box 30, State College,
PA 16804-0030, USA
.............................................................................................................................................
Abstract

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This paper outlines the design, performance predictions and value proposition for a novel thermoacoustic-
Stirling chiller called Trillium. Trillium, with an overall coefficient-of-performance of 1.4 at a load
temperature of 2308C will be competitive in the total cost of ownership with the established vapor-
compression technology for commercial refrigeration applications such as grocery store cooling. These
customers are typically not as first cost sensitive as retail consumers and are subject to increasing regulatory
pressure on the use of refrigerants with high global warming potential, which creates an opportunity for
alternatives such as thermoacoustic-Stirling with a low total environmental warming impact.

Keywords: thermoacoustic; stirling; acoustic; refrigerator; helium

*Corresponding author:
poese@psu.edu Received 20 January 2013; revised 25 April 2013; accepted 26 April 2013
................................................................................................................................................................................

1 INTRODUCTION
Although several designs [1– 3] have been explored for electrical-
ly driven thermoacoustic chillers, none of these have so far been
attractive in the HVAC/R markets. Stimulated by an ARPA-E
grant, we have undertaken the design and construction of a
machine that can compete in the total cost of ownership with
the established vapor-compression technology for commercial
refrigeration applications such as grocery store cooling. These
customers are typically not as first cost sensitive as retail consu-
mers and are subject to increasing regulatory pressure on the use
of refrigerants with high global warming potential, which creates
an opportunity for alternatives such as thermoacoustic-Stirling.
Thermoacoustic machines belong to the closed-cycle class of
heat engines and are subject to Carnot efficiency restrictions.
They are similar in many ways with Stirling machines. The goal
for the technology development has been to create a closed-cycle
engine technology, that is, both efficient enough to present sig-
nificant fuel savings (and, therefore, reduce emissions) while
also being mechanically simple enough to meet price and reli-
ability targets. At the core of the machine is a pair of heat
exchangers which bookend a slab of porous media. The working
gas of the machine oscillates within the heat exchangers and the
porous media between them. As the gas in thermal contact with
these core elements experiences pressure and velocity changes
with the correct phase, heat pumping is realized.
This core is mounted into a container of carefully designed
dimensions so that the gas oscillations will be resonant, which
not only sets the frequency of the gas oscillation, but also pro-
vides an impedance (the ratio of the oscillating gas pressure to
the oscillating gas velocity) enhancement favorable to the design
and efficiency of the machine. From the standpoint of efficiency,
an impedance higher than the characteristic impedance of the
gas is preferable because the loss in the porous medium tends to
be attributable more to drag than to non-adiabatic pressure
oscillations as the pores have to be fairly small to get good
thermal communication between the solid and the gas. Since the
capacity of these machines is proportional to the product of the
oscillating pressure amplitude and the oscillating velocity ampli-
tude, only the product of these quantities needs to be main-
tained to meet a particular capacity—the designer is free to
trade velocity amplitude for pressure amplitude (i.e. a high im-
pedance) to optimize efficiency. Additionally, since the acoustic
wave in thermoacoustic cooling machines is often driven electro-
mechanically, a higher impedance means that a relatively small
back-and-forth motion of the piston is enough to make large
pressure swings: small piston motions can take advantage of
many kinds of seals that do not require lubrication, such as
flexure seals or dry-fit clearance seals.
Thermoacoustic machines can be categorized on the pore size
of a porous medium compared to the thermal boundary layer
thickness in the gas oscillating through the medium. The
medium is referred to as a ‘stack’ when the pore diameter is
similar in diameter to the thermal boundary layer, and as ‘regen-
erator’ when the pore diameter is 5– 10 times smaller than the
thermal boundary layer thickness. In either case, the porous

International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies 2013, 8, i79–i84

# The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com
doi:10.1093/ijlct/ctt037 i79
M.E. Poese et al.
medium is placed between the two primary heat exchangers
mentioned above. The regenerator-based machines have the po-
tential to be more efficient than the stack-based machines at the
expense of slightly more complication. Each type of machine
may have a role in particular applications.
2 THE IN-LINE DESIGN
The design presented here, named Trillium, is a linear arrange-
ment of a series of thermal cores (two heat exchangers flanking a
regenerator) into a resonator that contains an integer number of
wavelengths of sound [4]. Since compactness is important for a
commercial product, the resonator is made significantly shorter
than a wavelength in pure helium (which is 10 m at 100 Hz) by
the physical, oscillating mass of the linear motor armatures and
pistons that are much more dense than their equivalent volume
of helium. There is one motor for each thermal core, and each
motor is driven with a relative phase shift of 2p/N radians,
where N is the number of stages.
Specifically, Trillium (which will fit into a 35-cm diameter
pressure vessel that is 100-cm tall) employs three linear motors
and three thermal cores: each motor is driven by a sinusoidally
varying voltage that is phased 1208 from its neighbor. As shown
in Figure 1, two pistons are connected to each motor armature,
one on each side along the axis of motion. The phasor diagram
in Figure 2 shows the velocity of the gas,1 U, which is also the
velocity of the pistons, u, at the piston face, each separated by a
phase angle of 1208. Considering the piston velocities of motor
#1 and #2, it can be seen that inside of the active volume
(the chamber delineated by the green background), the phase of
the gas velocity must change by 1208, and near the center of the
chamber where the regenerator is placed, the gas velocity is the
phasor average of the gas velocity at each opposing piston face:
this gas velocity is labeled U12. To execute an efficient Stirling
cycle, the oscillating gas pressure must be in-phase with the gas
velocity [5]. For efficient operation of the linear motors, the
reactive part of the load presented to each motor is zero: each
motor is operating at resonance. Adjustment of the ‘Acoustic
Load Matching Duct’ size changes the compliance felt by the
motor and allows the designer to tune for resonance between the
moving mass of the motor, the intrinsic stiffness of the motor
and the compliance of the gas on either side of each motor.
The displacement of each motor/piston, x, lags the velocity
by 908; these are shown on the diagram in orange. The pressure
inside the active volume changes in response to the superpos-
ition of the two piston displacements described approximately
by the adiabatic gas law,
pm Vmg ¼ ð pm þ DpÞðVm þ DVÞg ;
1
The volume velocity, a more convenient quantity for systems that
include changes is the cross-sectional area, is the product of piston
velocity, v, and effective piston area, noted here as Ap. That the area
includes some portion of the radial flexure seal.
i80 International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies 2013, 8, i79–i84
where g is the ratio of constant pressure to constant volume spe-
cific heats. In this expression, Dp is the acoustic pressure fluctu-
ation which is small compared with the mean pressure pm.
Similarly, DV is the change in the active gas volume Vm caused
by the vector sum of the piston displacements.
Since the effective piston area, Ap, is essentially constant
over the displacement cycle of the motor, the change in volume
of the gas between motor #1 and motor #2 (stage 1– 2) is
DV12 ¼ Ap ðx1  x2 Þ. After a Taylor series approximation to the
terms on the right-hand side of Equation (1), the pressure p12 is
pm
p12 ¼ g Ap ðx1  x2 Þ: ð2Þ
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Vm
The phasor diagram shown in Figure 2 shows the acoustic pres-
sure to be in-phase with the gas velocity within the regenerator.
This topology may be the closest approach between the ther-
moacoustic design paradigms and the alpha-Stirling topology:
Trillium could be considered to be three alpha-Stirling machines
arranged end-to-end. A solid mechanical connection transmits
the motion of motor #1 to the piston above thermal core 3– 1.
3 TRILLIUM PERFORMANCE TARGETS AND
VALUE PROPOSITION
The performance goal for Trillium is that it moves 3.5 kW of
heat from a flowing liquid at 2298C and rejects the sum of this
heat and the lost work generated inside the machine to atmos-
pheric air at þ358C. The end-to-end COP (ratio of cooling cap-
_ net =E_ including the pumps and a
acity to total electrical input, Q
fan for the secondary loops) goal for the machine is 1.4 (35% of
the Carnot efficiency between these two temperatures), which
would be quite competitive in the commercial low-temperature
refrigeration market.
The design process of Trillium includes a minimization of the
lost work in each subsystem while balancing the constraints of
available fabrication processes and materials. The design process
is further constrained by the goal of commercialization: pro-
cesses and materials used in this design have a reasonable path
toward volume production costs competitive with current
vapor-compression-based alternatives.
Table 1 lists the major loss mechanisms that impact the de-
struction of exergy in Trillium. Since Trillium is designed to
move 3500 W of heat from a load at 2308C and reject it to the
environment at 358C with a COP of 1.4, the maximum energy
input allowed under these constraints is 2500 W. The minimum
amount of energy input required by the second law of thermo-
ð1Þ
dynamics is 950 W, which leaves 1550 W left for the irreversible
energy dissipation in the parts of the machine. The dissipation
of each loss mechanism is listed in the middle column and the
fractional loss of this mechanism compared with the maximum
dissipation allowed to still reach a COP of 1.4 is listed in the
right column. These performance estimates come from
 Performance estimates of a thermoacoustic chiller

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Figure 1. This schematic of Trillium shows the components of the three identical stages that sustain a complete single wavelength of sound. Acoustic power flows
upward in the active helium volume (green), and heat is pumped downward from the load to exhaust heat exchangers. In the schematic on the left, the orange
arrows show the sound wave being dissipated in the thermal core (heat exchangers and regenerator) and the yellow arrows show the direction of heat pumping.
As the sound wave passes through the linear motor section, it is amplified by the input of electrical power to the motors which transform the electrical power into
acoustical energy. The heat from the load is shown with the blue arrows entering the load primary heat exchangers and the exhaust heat is shown with the red
arrows leaving the system via the exhaust primary heat exchangers (secondary loops are not shown here). On the right, a solid model rendering of the device
is shown with the energy return yoke that transmits the motion of the bottom linear motor to the top of the upper thermal core.

International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies 2013, 8, i79–i84 i81

M.E. Poese et al.

Acoustic power dissipation on surfaces is due to the viscosity

that shears the fluid within the acoustic boundary layer as well as
the isothermal condition of the wall (due to its large heat cap-
acity) that causes heat to be transferred between the wall and the
gas during the gas’s temperature change in response to the adia-
batic pressure oscillation. An equation that describes the power
lost by the wave as it oscillates over the surface is

3mDx v2 Arh2 Dx
DE_ ¼  2 jU1 j2  j p1 j2 ; ð3Þ
2Arh 6kTm

where m is the fluid viscosity, Dx is the length of the regenerator

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in the direction of acoustic wave propagation, A is the cross-
sectional area of the regenerator, rh is the hydraulic radius of the
channel through which the acoustic wave propagates, U1 is the
Figure 2. This phasor diagram shows how the sinusoidally oscillating pressure velocity amplitude of a gas parcel, k is the thermal conductivity
is in-phase with the gas velocity when the linear motors are driven 1208 of the gas, Tm is the mean temperature of a gas parcel and p1 is
out-of-phase with one another. U1, U2 and U3 represent the velocities of the the acoustic pressure amplitude.
three pistons shown in Figure 1. This is the optimal phase relationship to
minimize lost work in the Stirling cycle.
3.2 Total HX temperature deficit
The unavoidable temperature difference between the flowing
1
liquid and either the oscillating helium (on the primary exchan-
Table 1. This table details the dissipation in each of the major subsystems
gers) or the steady air (on the secondary exchangers) causes
of Trillium
Trillium to have to pump heat across a wider temperature span
Loss mechanism Dissipation (W) Fraction of allowable loss for than would be required if these temperature differences were
COP ¼ 1.4 (%) zero. The incremental amount of work required to extend the
Primary HX surface loss 87 6 span to accommodate these temperature differences is reported
Total HX temp deficit 250 16 in this entry of Table 1. The impact of the primary and second-
Primary HX join loss 282 18 ary exchangers is lumped together here to keep this table simple,
Primary HX minor loss 6 0 but in practice they are not tightly coupled optimizations.
Regenerator surface loss 216 14
Linear motor inefficiency 250 16
Optimization of the lost work in the primary exchangers
Pumps and fans 350 23 requires a tradeoff of the effectiveness (temperature drop),
Total 1441 93 viscous loss on the oscillating helium side, and pressure drop on
the steady flowing liquid side. Attaining high effectiveness
Resonator surface losses and some other small losses are omitted from this
table for the sake of brevity. on the helium side usually requires very fine pores through
which the helium flows, which increases the viscous losses and
can lead to expensive heat exchangers. The higher the frequency
analytical calculations outlined in Swift’s textbook [6] and also of the machine, the finer these pores have to be since the
from the computer model DeltaEC [7]. thermal penetration depth (boundary layer) scales inversely
with the square-root of the frequency. Design of the primary
heat exchanger is crucial for good overall performance and is
often the most challenging aspect of the design since the opti-
3.1 Primary HX surface loss mization must align both acousto-mechanical parameters
This entry in Table 1 describes the acoustic power dissipation (which are connected to the linear motor and resonator) and
that occurs on the surfaces of the heat exchanger in contact with thermodynamic parameters (connected to the regenerator and
the oscillating helium due to the viscosity of the helium. These
secondary system).
heat exchangers are referred to as ‘primary’ to distinguish them
from the ‘secondary’ heat exchangers. Heat is exchanged
between the oscillating helium and a flowing liquid in the 3.3 Primary HX join loss
primary heat exchangers, while in the secondary heat exchangers This is an unavoidable loss mechanism in Stirling-based
heat is transferred between this flowing liquid and the air in the machines [8] (which includes acoustic-Stirling and the many
conditioned space or the environment. There are two separate other topologies of closed-cycle machines such as free-piston
loops, one on the exhaust (ambient) side and one on the load and kinematic Stirling machines) that is caused by the parcels of
(cold) side: each loop includes a primary and secondary heat gas that exit the heat exchanger at one temperature and experi-
exchangers as well as a pump. ence nearly adiabatic expansion or compression while outside of

i82 International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies 2013, 8, i79–i84


the bounds of the heat exchanger surface. Upon return some
fraction of a cycle later, these gas parcels enter the heat exchanger
at either a higher or lower temperature (depending on the rela-
tive phasing) than the heat exchanger and some heat is irrevers-
ibly transferred for no net gain. Adding all three of the loss
mechanisms surrounding heat exchangers shows the importance
of the careful design of these elements in thermoacoustic
machines. An expression for the join loss given by Swift [6] is
DE_ 8 g  1 j p1 j
 cosu; ð4Þ
_E 3p g pm
where g is the ratio of specific heats ðg ¼ cp =cv Þ, pm is the mean
(static) pressure of the gas and u is the phase difference between
the oscillating acoustic pressure and gas parcel velocity, U1. For
traveling wave phasing, u is close to zero and the cosu is nearly
unity, which is why this loss mechanism is important to recog-
nize in regenerator-based machines but plays a much smaller
role in stack based machines where the phase difference is closer
to 908.
3.4 Primary HX minor loss
The loss of kinetic energy at expansions/constrictions or sharp
bends is a well-known loss mechanism in piping networks, and
the same effect can have serious impacts in acoustic resonators
and heat exchangers [9] when the gas velocities get large and/or
the discontinuity is particularly extreme. Owing to Trillium’s
in-line topology and low-oscillating gas velocity (because the in-
ertial parts of the resonator are the physical armature masses of
each of the linear motors and the gas portions are located
around velocity nodes), the heat exchangers are the only location
where minor losses might be an issue since they present a dra-
matic constriction to the flow. Table 1 points out, however, that
this loss mechanism is very small.
3.5 Regenerator surface loss
Just like the heat exchanger, the concentration of the surface area
in the regenerator that makes it an effective temporary store of
heat for the oscillating gas causes a resistive pressure drop for the
gas. The acoustic power dissipated by the regenerator resistance
is listed in this entry of Table 1.
3.6 Linear motor inefficiency
The linear motor is a topological inversion of a permanent
magnet linear motor and can have similar high efficiency. Just
like rotary motors, the linear motors have to be presented with
the particular load that allows it to perform at its maximum effi-
ciency [10]. This is an important part of the design process, and
constrains combinations of parameters that include mean pres-
sure, frequency and acoustic pressure amplitudes.
3.7 Pumps and fans
These two electro-mechanical components are used in the sec-
ondary heat exchange loops to circulate the liquid (there are
Performance estimates of a thermoacoustic chiller
several secondary heat transfer fluids in use for commercial re-
frigeration equipment that include water/polypropylenes mix-
tures, water/organic-salt mixtures and mineral oils). Since these
are usually off-the-shelf components, the optimization is some-
what straightforward although they have a big impact on the
overall system performance.
From a global optimization standpoint, Table 1 shows the
subsystem that consumes the largest fraction of the power
budget are the heat exchangers with a total of 6% þ 16% þ
18% ¼ 40% (and the energy consumption of the pumps and
fans could also be added to this total, which brings the overall
‘heat exchange’ subsystem loss to 63%). Clearly, the path to
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better performance of these kinds of systems lies in eliminating
the secondary system and/or reducing the join loss and tempera-
ture deficit.
Efficiency impacts the operating costs of commercial refriger-
ation equipment in more than just reduced electrical consump-
tion: an increasing number of locales are basing regulatory costs
on the total environmental warming impact (TEWI) of refriger-
ation equipment. TEWI is the sum of the direct impact on the
environment from the refrigerant (assumed to lose its full
charge over 10 years of operation) and the indirect impact from
the electricity used to power the device over its lifetime. The
direct contribution from commercial refrigeration equipment
that uses R-404a can contribute as much as 45% of the TEWI.
Since Trillium uses helium as the ‘refrigerant’, the direct TEWI
contribution is zero. With a competitive efficiency, Trillium, and
the technology on which it is based, makes an attractive value
proposition as an alternative to HFC-based refrigeration.
4 ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES
OF TRILLIUM
Compared with other designs, Trillium has several advantages
that allow the design to reach a fairly high level of efficiency.
First, compared with the thermoacoustic freezer employed for
ice-cream ‘impulse’ cabinets [3], Trillium has the optimal phase
relationship in the thermal core. Older passive network designs
inspired by breakthroughs at Los Alamos [11] suffer an unavoid-
able non-zero phase difference between oscillating pressure and
velocity within the regenerator. Additionally, these passive
network-based topologies require some mechanism to stop the
steady flows intrinsic to closed-loop resonator components.
Particularly, at the location where two branches of the resonator
meet, we suspect that gas mixing disturbs the stratified gas layers
that act as a thermal buffer space intended to insulate the load
(cold) heat exchanger from the ambient-temperature gas in the
rest of the machine. In Trillium, the active sections are simple
cylinders terminated at the top and bottom by the moving
pistons. The stages of Trillium are arranged so that the wide
open ducts that join the thermal core to the linear-motor/
flexure-seal components are gravitationally stable against
buoyancy-driven convection. Trillium also has a much smaller
International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies 2013, 8, i79–i84 i83
M.E. Poese et al.
amount of the surface area exposed to the oscillating helium
pressure thereby reducing thermal relaxation surface losses. The
overall active volume of helium is also much smaller than in pre-
vious designs. These choices allow better utilization of the linear
motor (which was usually stroke-limited in older designs).
A distinguishing feature of Trillium that distinguishes it from
many other alpha-Stirling arrangements is the use of a flexure
seal on the oscillating piston in place of a more typical clearance
seal. Because the piston diameter is large compared with most
Stirling machines of this capacity, a flexure design is likely to
allow higher efficiency (by eliminating frictional and blow-by
losses) and lower cost than a clearance seal designs that require
gas-bearing gap tolerances. In the past, flexure seals consisting of
commercially available bellows have been used in our designs
(see, for example [12, 13] which in some cases enclosed the
thermal core as shown in [14]). To minimize the length of the
system, injection-molded plastic flexure seal designs are being
pursued.
A drawback of Trillium, when compared with existing vapor-
compression systems, is the fact that the design must use a
multiplicity of linear motors with three being the practical
minimum. This constraint likely disqualifies (on a cost basis)
the design concept from the retail unitary system markets such
as home refrigerators and window air-conditioners where the
customers are very first cost sensitive and there is little regulatory
pressure. However, from the standpoint of commercial refriger-
ation systems which often employ a rack containing many com-
pressors for either zone control or capacity modulation, Trillium
will not suffer as large of a cost penalty. The requirement of
three linear motors does have an upside, however: since they are
driven 1208 out-of-phase with respect to one another the
center-of-mass of the machine will be always stationary and
hence the user can expect very low vibration levels and the at-
tendant quiet operation that results.
An issue to consider when evaluating the commercial poten-
tial of this technology is the manufacturing cost. The most ex-
pensive (and most complex) element in the design is the linear
motor; however, it contains the same essential bill of material as
a permanent magnet motor—it is topologically different but
fundamentally the same technology. The next most expensive
part is likely the heat exchangers; although these are made the
same way as the microchannel heat exchangers in use for auto-
mobile radiators and other fan-coil units, the tube density is
much higher in the thermoacoustic heat exchangers. The flexure
seals in Trillium are injection-molded parts made from high-
fatigue limit plastics from the PEEK/PAEK families. These parts,
which use conventional manufacturing techniques and widely
available materials, lead us to believe that products based on the
Trillium design have a commercial future.
5 CONCLUSION
Chillers based on thermoacoustic-Stirling design prejudices have
been under development for over a decade and have yet to find
i84 International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies 2013, 8, i79–i84
commercial acceptance in any market other than the pulse-tube
cryocooler market where the performance goals and design con-
straints are much different. It may be worthwhile to reflect upon
the evolution of the scroll compressor which is currently the
dominant technology for cooling in the capacity range that
includes that of Trillium. First patented in 1905, practical scroll
compressors did not appear on the market until the late 1940s
and they were not widely commercially accepted until the early
1980s. This fact should encourage developers of alternative
cooling technologies.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work is generously supported by the Advanced Projects
Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) within the US Department of
Energy, Heatcraft Worldwide Refrigeration and ThermoAcoustics
Corporation.
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