Within the ERC SUPERCOOL project, researchers from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering (UL) presented the development and operation of a new compression-loaded elastocaloric regenerator to be used in a future cooling and heat-pumping devices. Elastocaloric cooling is considered one of the most promising alternatives to the environmentally harmful vapour-compression refrigeration technology. The developed elastocaloric egenerator is the world-first elastocaloric device that shows fatigue-resistant operation and yet record-breaking cooling and heating characteristics, which in terms of their specific properties exceed all caloric cooling devices developed to date. The regenerator exceeds the temperature span of 30 K and generates the cooling and heating power above 60 W (4.4 kW per kg of used elastocaloric material). The research was published in the prestigious journal Joule (IF=46,048).
This work demonstrates that it is possible to develop fatigue-resistant elastocaloric devices with exceptional cooling and heating characteristics, which opens the door to the further development of efficient and environmentally friendly elastocaloric cooling devices.
Figure: Shell-and-tube-like elastocaloric regenerator with Ni- Ti tubes
Free access to the article https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2022.08.011 and https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00412-3.