Thermoacoustic refrigeration for the automotive industry

Thermoacoustic refrigeration is an emerging ‘green’ technology and thermoacoustic devices are broadly divided into two distinct classes, but both involve an exchange between acoustic and thermal energy. In principle, heat ‘engines’ take heat energy from a hot reservoir, convert some of the heat energy into acoustic energy and dump the unused heat to a cool reservoir. Heat ‘pumps’ use acoustic energy to pump heat from one temperature reservoir to another, resulting in a temperature gradient between the two reservoirs.