Phys.org June 6, 2023
Various high-efficiency caloric cooling techniques meet the goal of developing zero–global warming potential refrigerants but scaling them up to technologically meaningful performance remains challenging. Caloric cooling is a different strategy that instead relies on moving solids through a phase transition. Researchers at the University of Maryland developed an elastocaloric cooling device that compresses fatigue-resistant bundles of nickel–titanium tubes to obtain an attractive cooling power and maximum temperature difference. Their cooling system has a maximum cooling power of 260 watts and a maximum temperature span of 22.5 kelvin. 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. The system showed that elastocaloric cooling, which only emerged 8 years ago, is a promising direction for commercializing caloric cooling. The device is competitive relative to other caloric strategies and may be attractive for eventual commercialization… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE VideoÂ