Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques IPMElasto-Cool project (completed)
Elastocalorics: Development of highly efficient heat pumps without harmful refrigerants for heating and cooling
The project focused on the development of 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 corresponding demonstrator of an elastocaloric heat pump was to be developed as part of this project.
As a result, the project successfully demonstrated long-term stability of more than 10 million cycles without material failure. This means an improvement in long-term stability by orders of magnitude compared to other previously published systems. The project goal of realizing a highly efficient heat transfer from the elastocaloric material to the heat source and sink of the system was achieved. The specific cooling capacity was thus increased to 14 W/g – a peak value compared to other elastocaloric cooling systems.
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)