Compressor-Free Refrigerator On the Way

Iddo Genuth writes "Scientists from Penn State University are designing the future of refrigerators and other cooling devices through magnetic field refrigeration. The investigation pertaining to electrically induced heat effects of some ferroelectric polymers might one day replace electrically powered refrigerators and their compressors and coils. The researchers are focusing on ferroelectric polymers that exhibit temperature changes at room temperature under an electrical field. The same technology might also find its way into computers and other devices in the future, making them run cooler without complex cooling mechanisms."

Comments

Dupe

[ShadowRangerRIT]

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/10/2237223 And the first summary had more details.

Re:Dupe

[spun]

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Re:Dupe

[Daimanta]

This is a new feature on Slashdot. The same article is rehashed again and again each time using less and less information. Eventually the title will be "stuff" and the text will say "this matters". Furthermore it will be tagged with every previous tags and will cover every previous discussion on Slashdot ever.

Then ????????

Then comes the singularity.

How energy efficient is this?

[mlts]

Yes, there are other ways to cool without a compressor, but they are in a lot of cases nowhere as energy efficient as the tried and true way of compression/evaporation. For example, peltiers can do cooling, but they take a lot more power and produce less temperature differential than the standard methods.

Re:Magnetic cooling for computers?

[NemosomeN]

For our older readers: This is no longer the case.

Re:My highly original thought on the subject

[MyLongNickName]

TFA is written very poorly and describes a phenomena involving polymers that is already widely known. There are many examples. Here is one you can try using something far less exotic than the polymers mentioned in the article.

For this example, take a rubber band. Stretch it out. Touch the stretched rubber band to your lips. It will feel warm. Hold it in the stretched position for a few seconds to let it cool down to room temperature. Now let the rubber band relax, and once again touch it to your lips. You should now notice that it will feel cool.

The above process uses exactly the same principles described in TFA. Stretching the rubber band causes reduction of disorder by aligning the polymer chains. It also warms the rubber band because of the work applied. As you hold the rubber band in the stretched state it will cool to room temperature releasing some of the energy needed to heat it. This is equivalent to the step where the electrical field is applied.

Now release the rubber band. The polymer chains now revert back to a disordered state, cooling the rubber. Since the rubber band started in a stretched room temperature state the relaxed rubber band will now be below room temperature. this is equivalent to turning off the electric field as mentioned in the article.

Voila. This is a wonderful new refrigeration system that will replace all existing known cooling systems. NOT.

There are so many issues with practical application of this it is not funny. If these issues didn't exist we would have been using rubber band refrigerators for many decades already.

Also, please note that from a thermodynamics point of view this is essentially how a conventional refrigeration system works (albeit fat far more efficiently).