Study the Heat Recovery Performance of Micro and Nano Metfoam Regenerators in Alpha Type Stirling Engine Conditions

This paper experimentally investigates the performance of micro and nano metfoam regenerators in alpha-type Stirling engine conditions. The thermal efficiency of this engine depends on performance of regenerator. Therefore, increase the heat recovery of regenerator raises the total efficiency. Accordingly, two types of regenerators from porous media are designed and simulated with different materials. Three-dimensional regenerator CFD simulation shows that randomize porous open cell metfoam made of silver as high conductivity and high heat capacity material is the best structure to fabricate metfoam regenerator. The porosity and matrix element diameter are optimized. The nano coating methodology enhances the activated surface. The regenerators are fabricated using casting polymer mold layer deposition. The nano silver particles are coated on the metfoam by sol-gel coating method. Experimental results show the improvement in regenerator percentage of heat recovery by 3.40% and 5.93% for micro metfoam and nano metfoam, respectively. The maximum improvement is achieved up to 8.65% in case of using the nano metfoam regenerator at 543K.