Natural gases have played a significant role in different sectors of the global economy. Recent analyses have shown that the world's gas consumption doubled over the last three decades; further growth of the gas consumption is predicted, rising to be 23%–28% of the total primary energy demand by 2030. Therefore, liquefaction of natural gases rapidly gains global importance. In this context, magnetic refrigeration emerges as a modern energy-saving technique, which is an alternative to the traditional gas-compression refrigeration. This paper is devoted to the study of the magnetocaloric effect in magnetic fields up to 10 T on a representative of the Laves phase alloys, GdNi2, which is considered as a perspective material for liquefaction of natural gases. For a magnetic field change of 10 T, the magnetic entropy change ΔSm ≈ −17 J/kg K and the adiabatic temperature change ΔTad ≈ 6.8 K was attained around Curie temperature TC = 70 K. The maximal value of the adiabatic temperature change measured directly in pulsed magnetic fields up to 50 T is ΔTad ≈ 15 K.
Natural gas is useful for the transition from traditional fossil fuels to renewable energies. The consumption of liquid natural gas has been rising, and the demand is predicted to double by 2040. In this context, magnetocaloric gas liquefaction, as an emerging and energy-saving technology, could be an alternative to the traditional gas-compression refrigeration. In this work, we report a large magnetic entropy change of 7.42 J/kg K under a magnetic field change of 2 T in Nd2In at 109 K, which is near the boiling temperature of natural gas of 112 K. The maximum adiabatic temperature change reaches 1.13 K under a magnetic field change of 1.95 T and is fully reversible. The magnetic phase transition is confirmed to be of the first-order type with the negligible thermal hysteresis. Further investigations on the thermal expansion and the magnetostriction reveal that the magnetic transition undergoes two stages with a negligible volume change. The longitudinal strain increases with magnetic fields and then decreases. These interesting properties are useful for the practical design of a magnetocaloric natural gas liquefaction system and for the fundamental understanding of the phase transitions in other RE2In intermetallics.
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