Cooling accounts for 17 % of total global electricity consumption. Vapor compression cooling dominated the markets, which uses refrigerants that can leak to the environment and exhibits low efficiency. By contrast, cooling based on an electric-field driven change in temperature of certain materials, i.e. the electrocaloric (EC) effect, promises an environmentally-friendly technology with high efficiency. However, three key obstacles have prevented EC cooling from becoming commercially relevant: small temperature span, low fatigue life, and high applied voltage.
This project had an ambitious goal of gaining insight into a regenerative EC cooler, which would enable the design and fabrication of the first regenerative EC device exhibiting a large temperature span with long fatigue life. Performance targets include a temperature span of 20 K, a fatigue life of 10000 cycles, and a low applied voltage. The research was supposed to be organized into three work packages:
(1) advanced material characterization,
(2) high-fidelity system modelling,
(3) demonstration of a high-performance demonstrator.
To achieve this challenging goal, a strong collaboration was going to take place between three leading institutions, i.e. the Technical University of Denmark, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Barcelona.
The project would demonstrate a new concept of a robust, high performance electrocaloric cooler, which was expected to transform the current cooling technology to the new one that is environmentally friendly and efficient.