Optimal design of the pulse tube refrigerator with slit-type heat exchangers Original Research Article

A single-stage inline pulse tube refrigerator (PTR) with tapered slit-type heat exchangers utilized as the aftercooler and the cold end heat exchanger has been designed, fabricated and investigated. Simple energy conservation equation is applied for the design of the tapered slit-type heat exchangers with which the PTR is optimized. The air-cooled aftercoolers with different slit configurations have been compared in this paper with regard to its cooling capacity. The optimized PTRs driven by a single-piston linear compressor achieve the lowest temperature of 53.1 K and 53.5 K, and the cooling capacity of 3.0 W at 60 K and 3.5 W at 60 K, respectively. The result shows that the tapered slit-type heat exchangers can replace the mesh-type heat exchanger, but the geometric configuration of slits and the compressible volume should be carefully considered for optimum performance of the cooler.