07 July 2023

High-performance multimode elastocaloric cooling system

University of Maryland researchers in the US have developed a high-performance elastocaloric cooling system.

Editor’s summary

Vapor compression cooling often relies on refrigerants that are greenhouse gases or have other issues with flammability and toxicity. Caloric cooling is a different strategy that instead relies on moving solids through a phase transition. Qian et al. developed an elastocaloric cooling device that compresses fatigue-resistant bundles of nickel-titanium tubes to obtain an attractive cooling power and maximum temperature difference. The device is competitive relative to other caloric strategies and may be attractive for eventual commercialization. - Brent Grocholski

Abstract

Developing zero-global warming potential refrigerants has emerged as one area that helps address global climate change concerns. Various high-efficiency caloric cooling techniques meet this goal, but scaling them up to technologically meaningful performance remains challenging. We have developed an elastocaloric cooling system with a maximum cooling power of 260 watts and a maximum temperature span of 22.5 kelvin. These values are among the highest reported for any caloric cooling system. Its key feature is the compression of fatigue-resistant elastocaloric nitinol (NiTi) tubes configured in a versatile multimode heat exchange architecture, which allows the harnessing of both high delivered cooling power and large temperature spans. Our system shows that elastocaloric cooling, which only emerged 8 years ago, is a promising direction for commercializing caloric cooling.

Read the research paper “High-performance multimode elastocaloric cooling system” here.