Recent Developments of Liquid Metal MHD Thermoacoustic Engines


Recent Developments of Liquid Metal MHD Thermoacoustic Engines

Hamann, D.; Gerbeth, G.

A literature review on thermoacoustic engines (TAEs), with particular emphasis on liquid metal MHD TAEs is presented. The main aim of this paper is to draw the attention and the interest of the international MHD community to these new developments since it has only been discussed in the literature on acoustics.
TAEs provide a new way to convert heat to mechanical energy, or more strictly speaking, to acoustic power. They have an efficiency comparable to existing techniques but with the possibility of increasing reliability because there are no moving parts. TAEs utilize heat flow from a high-temperature source to a low-temperature sink to generate acoustic power in the form of high-amplitude sound waves in liquid sodium. Since acoustic power is inconvenient in most situations, a power transducer is required to convert acoustic power into an electric one. Though there are a number of converter mechanisms, the magnetohydrodynamic one is particularly suited for sound waves in liquid metals. A magnetic field perpendicular to the direction of sound propagation is applied to the center of the resonator, in which the sound has been generated. There are electrodes in the sodium that form an electric current path perpendicular to both magnetic field and sound velocity.

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Publ.-Id: 1884