Author: Konstantin Matveev (Washington State University) - Hydrogen is a promising clean and renewable fuel. However, to bring and store hydrogen to the energy-dense liquid form, cooling down to low cryogenic temperatures is required. A regenerator-based thermoacoustic cryocooler can be used to remove heat from and subsequently liquefy flowing-through hydrogen. A thermoacoustic theory is applied in this study to model cooling and phase change of saturated gaseous hydrogen flow into a saturated mixture of vapor and liquid. Example calculations of the process performance are carried out for a set of mass flow rates and acoustic impedance in a regenerator with micropores. The presented model and results can be useful for engineers developing novel hydrogen liquefaction systems.
