Solar powered thermoacoustic cooling is presumably one of  the first commercial application of thermoacoustics on short term. To day onset and operating temperatures of multi-stage traveling wave thermoacoustic engines are at such a level that heat from vacuum tube solar collectors (120°C-160 °C) can be utilized effectively to power thermoacoustic (heat driven) heat pumps for cooling in domestic and rural applications. Main assets of the concept are the lack of environmental issues, absence of mechanical moving parts and the linear relation between cooling power and solar irradiation.

Market introduction is in preparation by a joint venture together with Solar collector manufacturer Watt Sp. z o.o and Thermo Acoustic Solutions Sp. z o.o both established in Poland. One of the activities within the framework of this collaboration is the build of two prototypes. (1) a representative prototype equipped with fluid-gas heat exchanger for testing in combination with vacuum tube collectors under realistic conditions and (2) a transportable device  for demonstration purposes. The demonstration prototype is completed by last week and is depicted below.

For simplicity this demonstrator operates without any fluid circuit and is externally powered by cartridge heaters keeping the hot heat exchanger at 160ºC (simulating  input heat from the vacuum tube collectors) and is cooled by forced convection keeping the cold heat exchanger around 40ºC, which both are representatives temperatures for our applications.

To allow visual inspection of the construction, no isolation is applied at all. Nevertheless the temperature lift of the cooler section is  more than 40ºC and ice is formed quickly at the refrigerator cold heat exchanger as is shown at the left.

The working gas in the demonstration set-up is helium at a mean pressure of 1 MPa, the pressure amplitude is 35 kPa and the oscillation frequency 138 Hz.  Net cooling power at -5ºC is about 50W at a net heat input of 380W at 160ºC. After correction for the absence of any isolation the exegetic efficiency of both the engine section and the refrigerator section is found to be in the order of 0.35 .