Dynamic acoustic optimization of pulse tube refrigerators for rapid cooldown.

ABSTRACT: Pulse tube refrigerators are a critical enabling technology for many disciplines that require low temperatures. These refrigerators dominate the total power consumption of most modern cryostats, including those that reach millikelvin temperatures using additional cooling stages. In state-of-the-art commercial pulse tube refrigerators, the acoustic coupling between the driving compressor and the refrigerator is fixed and optimized for operation at base temperature. We show that this optimization is incorrect during the cooldown process, which results in wasted power consumption by the compressor and slow cooldown speed. After developing analytic expressions that demonstrate the need for acoustic tuning as a function of temperature, we dynamically optimize the acoustics of a commercial pulse

SUBMITTER: Snodgrass R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11039843 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature