Developments in magnetocaloric refrigeration

TLDR

Modern society relies on readily available refrigeration, and magnetic refrigeration offers advantages such as no harmful gases, compactness, and low noise, with recent room‑temperature magnetic refrigerants exhibiting large first‑order magnetocaloric effects that exceed those of Gd metal. The review compares different magnetic refrigerant materials in terms of scientific aspects and industrial applicability. The authors also provide theoretical considerations on the fundamental aspects of the magnetocaloric effect.

Abstract

Modern society relies on readily available refrigeration. Magnetic refrigeration has three prominent advantages compared with compressor-based refrigeration. First, there are no harmful gases involved; second, it may be built more compactly as the working material is a solid; and third, magnetic refrigerators generate much less noise. Recently a new class of magnetic refrigerant-materials for room-temperature applications was discovered. These new materials have important advantages over existing magnetic coolants: they exhibit a large magnetocaloric effect (MCE) in conjunction with a magnetic phase-transition of first order. This MCE is larger than that of Gd metal, which is used in the demonstration refrigerators built to explore the potential of this evolving technology. In the present review we compare the different materials considering both scientific aspects and industrial applicability. Because fundamental aspects of MCE are not so widely discussed, we also give some theoretical considerations.