Berkeley Lab presents ionocaloric cooling method

Ionocaloric cooling takes advantage of how energy, or heat, is stored or released when a material changes phase, such as changing from solid ice to liquid water. The ionocaloric cycle causes this phase and temperature change through the flow of ions that come from a salt.

The team at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory hopes that this 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 ‘vapour compression’ systems which use gases with high global warming potential (GWP) as refrigerants.

Ionocaloric refrigeration would eliminate the risk of such gases escaping into the atmosphere by replacing them with solid and liquid components, researchers said.

“The landscape of refrigerants is an unsolved problem. No one has successfully developed an alternative solution that makes stuff cold, works efficiently, is safe, and doesn’t hurt the environment,” said Drew Lilley, a graduate research assistant at Berkeley Lab and PhD candidate at UC Berkeley who led the study.