Breakthrough in thermoacoustic energy conversion

Using industrial waste heat to create useful heat or cooling could be less than five years away. ECN along with its project partners achieved an important breakthrough in thermoacoustics, with the partial EU funded THATEA project.

The project, the first on a European level in this field, combined efforts in the field of thermoacoustics in order to acquire a leadership position in this new, promising and innovative technology.

Higher efficiency
The THATEA consortium experimented with two particular applications. The first application consists of a simulation of a gas driven thermoacoustic system to pump heat from 10 to 80°C; a thermoacoustic combination that has not been seen before. The second application concerns a waste heat driven thermoacoustic chiller producing cold at a temperature of -40°C, with a tripled efficiency than previously measured.

Feasible technology
The key outcome of the project is that the two integral systems that were built prove that thermoacoustic technology is a feasible technology that can be applied in a number of energy related applications. Based on knowledge gained with the THATEA-project, currently the focus of research at ECN is at developing a thermoacoustic heat transformer for industrial applications. Other applications could include using heat pumps for domestic applications, solar driven cooling systems and conversion of waste heat to electricity.

The technology also has a wide-reaching potential because the practical embodiment is relatively simple. The systems are housed in a structure similar to a tube and contains no moving parts. This gives it a high reliability and a long life span, making it more economically feasible than some other energy technologies.

The next step for thermoacoustics is in further scaling up and commercializing the technology by licensing ECN’s intellectual property to equipment manufactures for use on particular applications.

More information
ECN, Simon Spoelstra: +31 88 5154523 / spoelstra@remove-this-part-ecn.nl

More information about the THATEA project be found here
You can read the whole article at Insight Publishers | Project 27

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