Heating & cooling without harmful refrigerants

The aim of the project is to develop highly efficient heat pumps – without harmful refrigerants and without a compressor – based on the elastocaloric effect. Further to the omission of climate-harming refrigerants, the energy efficiency of heat pumps can be increased by 20 to 30 percent by applying the elastocaloric principle. The technology is suited for household, industrial, commercial and transportation applications. Based on a novel, patent-pending system concept, a first heat pump demonstrator with a coefficient of performance* > 5 and 100 W heat pump capacity at an adiabatic temperature change of 35 K ist to be developed within the scope of this project.

Innovation mentors

Dr.-Ing. Rainer Lang, R&D Manager Heat Pumps, Vaillant GmbH

Dr. Christine Susanne Junior, Expert for thermodynamic systems, IAV GmbH

Project term

August 2018 – July 2021

Project finance

German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)

*The coefficient of performance indicates the ratio of the generated cooling or heating output to the electrical power used.