Energy-efficient miniature-scale heat pumping based on shape memory alloys. (19th July 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ossmer, Hinnerk; Wendler, Frank; Gueltig, Marcel; Lambrecht, Franziska; Miyazaki, Shuichi; Kohl, Manfred
• Is Part Of: Smart materials and structures. Volume 25:Number 8(2016:Aug.)
• Publication Date: 2016-07-19
• Subjects: elastocaloric effect -- heat pumping -- solid state cooling -- shape memory alloy -- superelasticity; Smart materials -- Periodicals; Strucural design -- Periodicals; 620.11
• DOI: 10.1088/0964-1726/25/8/085037
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0964-1726

Abstract

Abstract: Cooling and thermal management comprise a major part of global energy consumption. The by far most widespread cooling technology today is vapor compression, reaching rather high efficiencies, but promoting global warming due to the use of environmentally harmful refrigerants. For widespread emerging applications using microelectronics and micro-electro-mechanical systems, thermoelectrics is the most advanced technology, which however hardly reaches coefficients of performance (COP) above 2.0. Here, we introduce a new approach for energy-efficient heat pumping using the elastocaloric effect in shape memory alloys. This development is mainly targeted at applications on miniature scales, while larger scales are envisioned by massive parallelization. Base materials are cold-rolled textured Ti49.1 Ni50.5 Fe0.4 foils of 30 μ m thickness showing an adiabatic temperature change of +20/−16 K upon superelastic loading/unloading. Different demonstrator layouts consisting of mechanically coupled bridge structures with large surface-to-volume ratios are developed allowing for control by a single actuator as well as work recovery. Heat transfer times are in the order of 1 s, being orders of magnitude faster than for bulk geometries. Thus, first demonstrators achieve values of specific heating and cooling power of 4.5 and 2.9 W g −1, respectively. A maximum temperature difference of 9.4 K between heat source and sink is reached within 2 min. Corresponding COP on the device level are 4.9 (heating) and 3.1 (cooling).