High cooling performance in a double-loop electrocaloric heat pump

Cooling through solid-state electrocaloric materials is an attractive replacement for vapor compression. Despite recent efforts, devices that are potentially commercially competitive have not been developed. We present an electrocaloric cooler with a maximum temperature span of 20.9 kelvin and a max...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Li, Junning, Torelló Massana, Àlvar|||0000-0002-4173-2529, Kovacova, Veronika, Prah, Uros, Aravindhan, Ashwath, Granzow, Torsten, Usui, Tomoyasu, Hirose, Sakyo, Defay, Emmanuel
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/398413
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/398413
https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.adi5477
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Heat pumps
Cooling
Bombes de calor
Refrigeració
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Física
Descripción
Sumario:Cooling through solid-state electrocaloric materials is an attractive replacement for vapor compression. Despite recent efforts, devices that are potentially commercially competitive have not been developed. We present an electrocaloric cooler with a maximum temperature span of 20.9 kelvin and a maximum cooling power of 4.2 watts under the moderate applied electric field of 10 volts per micrometer without any observed breakdown. Moreover, the maximum coefficient of performance, even taking into account energy expended on fluid pumping, reaches 64% of Carnot’s efficiency as long as energy is properly recovered. We believe that this demonstration shows electrocaloric cooling to be a very promising alternative to vapor compression cooling.