This system offers many applications to commercial users, including increased reliability, fewer moving parts and much lower cold-end vibration than designs previously used both commercially and on spacecraft. Pulse-tube refrigerators can operate over a wide range of temperatures. The technology can be used in food refrigerators and freezers, laboratory freezers and freeze dryers. Pulse-tube refrigerators also can be used to cool electronic devices and detectors. It is the first unit applied to the temperature range and load level needed for typical food and laboratory freezers.
Gas is compressed in the compressor.
Helium then flows through the regenerator, which is essentially an economizer, conserving cooling from one cycle to the other. Next, the gas enters the cold-end heat exchanger, in which heat is added to the gas from the surroundings. In the final stage, the gas enters the pulse tube, orifice and reservoir, which, together, produce the phase shift between the mass flow and pressure necessary for cooling. The gas moves repeatedly between the hot and cold ends rather than circulating continuously around a loop, as is found in some other types of refrigeration systems. Heat is lifted and rejected at the hot-end heat exchanger, which is also cooled by water.