Investigation of an innovative method for DC flow suppression of double-inlet pulse tube coolers Original Research Article

The use of double-inlet mode in the pulse tube cooler opens up a possibility of DC flow circulating around the regenerator and the pulse tube. The DC flow sometimes deteriorates the performance of the cryocooler because such a steady flow adds an unwanted thermal load to the cold heat exchanger. It seems that this problem is still not well solved although a lot of effort has been made. Here we introduce a membrane-barrier method for DC flow suppression in double-inlet pulse tube coolers. An elastic membrane is installed between the pulse tube cooler inlet and the double-inlet valve to break the closed-loop flow path of DC flow. The membrane is acoustically transparent, but would block the DC flow completely. Thus the DC flow is thoroughly suppressed and the merit of double-inlet mode is remained. With this method, a temperature reduction of tens of Kelvin was obtained in our single-stage pulse tube cooler and the lowest temperature reached 29.8 K.