Study on damping the pressure pulsation in the valve chamber of reciprocating compressor using the helmholtz resonator

A Helmholtz resonator installed nearby the discharge valve chamber of a reciprocating compressor was presented to damp the gas pulsation in the pipeline, and its attenuation characteristic was investigated. A three-dimensional acoustic model of the gas pulsation in the piping system was established, and the gas column natural frequencies and the pressure wave profiles were predicted. The experiment was conducted to compare the pressure pulsations with and without the Helmholtz resonator. The results show that the pulsation amplitude in the valve chamber decreased by 40.4% with the Helmholtz resonator while the pulsation downstream of the buffer changed slightly. The characteristic frequency of the cylinder nozzle changed to 40.4 Hz and 66.9 Hz instead of the original frequency of 52.9 Hz because of the Helmholtz resonator installed. In addition, the pulsation amplitude dropped by only 24.4% when the resonance frequency of the resonator deviated from the characteristic frequency of the cylinder nozzle and was 46.3 Hz.