Scientists create cooling system that is less harmful to the environment

Like many scientific discoveries, observing people throwing salt on snow-covered streets and roads to prevent ice sheets from forming has led some researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the United States to an insight. Working with this concept of temperature change caused by salt ions, they developed a new technique: “ionocaloric cooling”.

The method relies on the way in which energy – that is, heat – is stored or released when a particular material changes phase, such as when ice turns into liquid water. In this fusion, what happens is the absorption of heat from the environment.. The opposite process – solidification – releases heat.

While using the ionocaloric cycle to melt ice using electrically charged particles (ions) is relatively simple, the scenario for refrigerants is more complex, explains first author of the study, mechanical engineer Drew Lilley of Berkeley Lab, in a statement. “No one has successfully developed a workaround that cools things downwork efficiently, be safe and do not harm the environment.”

How does ionocaloric cooling work?

Researchers in our lab have developed a new type of heating and cooling method that they hope will one day help phase out the refrigerants that contribute to global warming. #Climate change #IonocaloricCoolinghttps://t.co/Enx1hrOdbj@BerkeleyLabETA @ENERGY @doscience pic.twitter.com/XLRo0q4pqA

— Berkeley Lab (@BerkeleyLab) January 11, 2023

From the premise that solid or liquid cooling strategies depend on the caloric effects produced by the phase change of materials, the study’s authors concluded: ions in a solution can be used to control both melting and crystallization.

This cycle, called the ionocaloric cycle, together with the thermodynamic cycle that follows, could create a new calorie-based fully condensed phase cooling technology. This will allow existing “vapor compression” systems to be deprecated.which use refrigerant gases (hydrofluorocarbons) that have the potential to contribute greatly to global warming.

To prove their hypothesis, the researchers conducted an experimental demonstration using a salt made of iodine and sodium with ethylene carbonate, a solvent used in lithium-ion batteries. This is the first experiment A temperature change of 25°C using less than 1 volt. The authors received a provisional patent for their ionocaloric cooling cycle technology and began a new phase of testing.

ARTICLE – Science – DOI: 10.1126/science.ade1696.