A large fraction of global energy use is for refrigeration and air-conditioning, which could be decarbonised if efficient renewable energy technologies could be found. Vapour-compression technology remains the most widely used system to move heat up the temperature scale after more than 100 years; however, caloric-based technologies (those using the magnetocaloric, electrocaloric, barocaloric or elastocaloric effect) have recently shown a significant potential as alternatives to replace this technology due to high efficiency and the use of green solid-state refrigerants. Here, we report a regenerative elastocaloric heat pump that exhibits a temperature span of 15.3 K on the water side with a corresponding specific heating power up to 800 W kg -1 and maximum COP (coefficient-of-performance) values of up to 7. The efficiency and specific heating power of this device exceeds those of other devices based on caloric effects. These results open up the possibility of using the elastocaloric effect in various cooling and heatpumping applications.
Elastocaloric cooling and heating is an alternative cooling technology that has potential to be highly efficient and environmentally friendly. Experimental results are reported for two elastocaloric regenerators made of NiTi alloys in the form of parallel plates in two plate thicknesses. For the regenerator made of 0.2 mm plates, a maximum no-load temperature span of 17.6 K was achieved for an applied strain of 4.3 %. For the regenerator with 0.35 mm plates, a maximum temperature span of 19.9 K was reached for a strain of 3.5 %. The 0.2 mm regenerator failed after approximately 5200 cycles and the 0.35 mm regenerator failed after approximately 5500 cycles.
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