Imaging if this technology could cool a data centre.
Edit: I was not involved in this project. You are wasting your time asking me questions.
Cool, but I’m always a bit dubious by these statements.
Refrigerating just 12% of the produce that goes to waste every year due to spoilage would feed an estimated 1 billion more people.
I mean, I know cooling is important and making the process more efficient will make things better. But the reason why most of that food is thrown away is not lack of refrigeration, cheaper refrigeration will not solve that problem.
But the reason why most of that food is thrown away is not lack of refrigeration, cheaper refrigeration will not solve that problem.
I think “cheaper refrigerators” is an oversimplification. People without access to a functional refrigerator often have bigger problems than a mere absence of a single appliance.
But the energy savings is a big deal. We’re not just talking about food refrigeration but AC, which is a much bigger deal especially as we suffer a warning planet
cheaper refrigeration would DEFINITELY help this problem. the big issue with food waste is food spoils so quickly (especially produce and meat), so it makes more sense to toss it than try to find a big enough space that’s REFRIGERATED because the food is usually free, no one wants to spend thousands preserving it. cheaper refrigeration would absolutely improve this scenario.
Exactly
The link says ‘zero-emissions-cooling’
The article sez: “It relies on the temperature change of materials called shape memory alloys (SMAs) when they are stretched and released.”
How do you stretch something without producing any emissions?
Oh geeze, it’s that rubber band refrigerator that (I think) Tech Connections demoed?
I thought the same thing.
Seems they are mainly saying they developed cooling method that doesn’t rely on a greenhouse gas for a refrigerant. Not nothing.
…and if you stretch and release something off solar/wind power greenhouse emissions will be very low indeed.
I’m curious about lifespan of these systems. I don’t know much about SMAs, but my intuition says they degrade. Am I wrong? I hope I am :)
Elastocaloric coolers are not new. There are even some versions that you can buy right now, they usually for niche industrial use and have their own set of problems, namely that they’re not remotely as efficient as vapor compression so it costs more and moves less heat.
The breakthrough here was discovering a different alloy that allows sub-zero temperatures. It doesn’t change the efficiency which is the primary barrier to adoption.
Im sure that this doesn’t violate the laws of thermodynamics, but the headline makes it sound like this magics away the heat without using electricity or putting the heat anywhere.
Maybe it whisks the heat away to space?
Ye canna change the laws of physics, Captin.
Also Titanium is a bitch to extract if I recall correctly, hence the price. Still, options are good.
Jesus Christ, whoever wrote this “article” has no idea what they’re talking about. The researchers achieved sub-zero temperatures with a solid refrigerant, which is impressive. It has however absolutely nothing to do with climate change, because the heat still has to go somewhere. And the point that gas refrigerants are horrible greenhouse gases is not generally true anymore. Most new systems use gases as refrigerants that have equal or less impact on the atmosphere than co2 if they’re released into the atmosphere. And that only happens if the loop is damaged, under normal operation it should stay sealed.
Under normal operation, in a perfect system it will stay sealed. Problems come at end of life and in real world use. Seals aren’t perfect, gas escapes slowly. Some seals are bad, a blast chiller at my work needs regassing every other year. People dump old fridges and freezers on the street and they get damaged.
It all gets out eventually.
But past cooling devices have not had enough cooling power for commercial use. The HKUST team developed a device that uses a new type of solid refrigerant, a nickel-titanium alloy with a higher nickel ratio. They also use calcium chloride as the working fluid that transfers heat away for cooling. Their design connects multiple alloy tubes together for a cascading effect that amplifies cooling.
In outdoor tests, the desktop device cools a surface down from 24°C to -12°C, and froze water in two hours. Sun Qingping, the mechanical and aerospace engineering professor who led the work, said in a press release that the researchers plan to increase the system’s efficiency and make it more cost-effectiveness by using advanced shape memory alloy materials and trying different system designs.
Cool.
Er, so to speak.
Finally, someone else in this thread that sees the potential.
First law of thermodynamics…
Maxwell’s field equations
Markov chains
Science words
So multiple, nickel-titanium alloy tubes, are stretched and released within the refrigerator, causing a temperature change in the alloy, the heat of which (pulled from the interior) transferred to the calcium chloride fluid, being pumped around through the tubes; to be transferred to the outdoor climate, by use of an exterior heat exchanger. Something along those lines?
Maybe cool the planet with it.
TL;Dr but the gif looks really cool
Cool.
