Researchers hope that ionocaloric cooling could someday help replace refrigerants with high global warming potential and provide safe, efficient cooling and heating for homes. Adding salt to a road before a winter storm changes when ice will form. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrenc
This collage depicts elements related to ionocaloric cooling, a newly developed refrigeration cycle that researchers hope could help phase out refrigerants that contribute to global warming. Credit: Jenny Nuss/Berkeley Lab
Researchers hope that the method could one day provide efficient heating and cooling, which accounts for more than half of the energy used in homes, and help phase out current “vapor compression” systems, which use gases with high global warming potential as refrigerants. Ionocaloric refrigeration would eliminate the risk of such gases escaping into the atmosphere by replacing them with solid and liquid components.
Finding a solution that replaces current refrigerants is essential for countries to meet climate change goals, such as those in the Kigali Amendment . The agreement commits signatories to reduce production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons by at least 80% over the next 25 years. HFCs are powerful greenhouse gases commonly found in refrigerators and air conditioning systems, and can trap heat thousands of times as effectively as carbon dioxide.
They also demonstrated the technique experimentally. Lilley used a salt made with iodine and sodium, alongside ethylene carbonate, a common organic solvent used in lithium-ion batteries.
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