Design of a low-cost two-stage thermoacoustic electricity generator for rural communities in developing countries

This paper describes the numerical design of a two-stage looped-tube thermoacoustic electricity generator to provide electrical power for households in remote and rural areas of developing countries. The computational model has been implemented within DELTAEC design environment. It consists of two thermoacoustic units, an alternator, and a looped-tube resonator working in one-wavelength travelling-wave mode. Each unit contains a regenerator sandwiched by ambient and hot heat exchangers. The alternator is a 10 inch commercial loudspeaker (B&C 10NW64), which is positioned in series within the loop at a low acoustic impedance region between the two stages. The working gas is air at 2 bar; and the operating frequency is 96 Hz. After optimization, the model shows the designed prototype can deliver 130W of electricity at a thermal-to-electrical efficiency of 6%. The details of the design and optimization procedures are described.