Materials to Cool the Future

Rare Earth Deposits & Mining / Rare Earth Exploration, Mining, Processing, & Uses

Date posted: 08/09/15

Tatiana Correia reports that progress in the field of electrocaloric coolers is determined not only by development of new working media, but also by the ability to traceably and accurately measure electrocaloric properties in materials. Cooling and heating of buildings represent almost 40% of total EU27 energy consumption and are responsible for 36% of global warming emissions. A great deal of effort has gone into developing vapor-compression alternative technology to reduce artificial cooling environmental impact and expand its benefits. On the other hand, industries, such as electronics, automotive, healthcare and oil-gas, recognize the development of innovative cooling as a crucial part of their systems design. A good example is the ever-expanding microelectronic industry. The demand for higher levels of integration of electronic circuits urgently requires easily integrated thermal management solutions in order to improve their reliability and avert premature failure. Solid-state refrigeration, e.g. thermoelectric and magnetic cooling, can play a transformative role in these billion dollar industries by offering a clean and effective cooling solution. But despite the unquestionable and impressive development over the last six decades, solid-state refrigerants have yet a long way to go before reaching the wider refrigeration market. Their still very limited commercial viability is due to the fact that they provide low levels of efficiency (maximum 13% for thermoelectrics) and or expensive cooling, as magnetic refrigeration requires powerful and expensive magnets. The electric analogue of magnetic cooling electrocaloric cooling - which capitalizes on the ability of some materials to adiabatically change their temperature when an electric field is varied, appears as a very promising alternative to cool the future.