The experimental investigation of a pulse tube refrigerator with a ‘L’ type pulse tube and two orifice valves Original Research Article

In order to simplify the structure of the cold end of the pulse tube refrigerator (PTR) and have a better utilization of the cold energy of the system, a single stage four-valve pulse tube refrigerator (FVPTR) with a ‘L’ type pulse tube structure and two orifice valves at the hot end of pulse tube has been constructed. Verification experiments show that a two-orifice valve structure gives different adjustments to the gas flow rate of the hot end of the pulse tube than that of the one-orifice valve structure, a lowest temperature of 72 K was obtained at a frequency of 2.5 Hz under a system average pressure of 1.6 MPa with 200 mesh bronze screens as regenerator material, 20 mesh copper screens as stuffing material of heat exchanger. Due to the difficulty in manufacturing the thin ‘L’ type pulse tube, the wall thickness of the pulse tube in the experiment is relatively bigger than that of the ordinary pulse tube, which resulted in relatively big system loss and affected the minimum temperature of the system to a certain degree.