A research team from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has unveiled the world\u2019s first zero-degradation elastocaloric cooling device.<\/p>\n
Powered by a fatigue-resistant, solid-state refrigerant, this innovation delivers durable and green cooling, maintaining its stable performance even over a stunning one million operational cycles.<\/p>\n
This breakthrough will usher in highly efficient eco-friendly cooling, driving progress towards sustainable global development.<\/p>\n
Elastocaloric cooling, which is based on the reversible stress-induced phase transformation of shape memory alloys (SMAs), offers a promising green alternative to traditional refrigeration.<\/p>\n
Despite its great potential, commercialisation has been impeded by performance degradation and low reliability.<\/p>\n
The prevalent use of commercial NiTi SMA as the refrigerant in most existing elastocaloric cooling devices is a key challenge.<\/p>\n
This material is prone to functional fatigue, causing its cooling power to decline over extended use.<\/p>\n
To overcome this bottleneck, a team led by SUN Qingping, chair Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at HKUST, has developed a fatigue-resistant SMA and integrated it into an innovative refrigerant structure.<\/p>\n
By combining advanced SMA materials with device-level design and engineering, they have successfully addressed the critical issues of material functional fatigue and structural reliability.<\/p>\n
The breakthrough has resulted in a zero-degradation elastocaloric cooling device capable of maintaining stable cooling performance over long-term operation.<\/p>\n
In addition to the TiNiCuCo alloy developed by the research team, the device has a double-layer fin-type refrigerant structure.<\/p>\n
It was designed and fabricated to enhance both heat transfer efficiency and buckling resistance, achieving an ultra-high fatigue life exceeding 10 million cyclic compressive cycles.<\/p>\n
The innovative design achieved a 50% reduction in components and reduced the proportion of ineffective parts from 15% to 5%.<\/p>\n
Utilising this material and device design, the research team constructed a novel elastocaloric cooling device integrated with multiple refrigerant units.<\/p>\n
This device achieved a constant cooling power of 400W and maintained a constant temperature span of 41K (a temperature difference of 41\u00b0C) over one million operation cycles without degradation.<\/p>\n
Accelerated fatigue testing of the TiNiCuCo refrigerant also showed no functional degradation after 100 million cycles. Under real-world cooling conditions, the refrigerant is expected to operate reliably for more than a decade.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis breakthrough in cooling stability, achieved at both the material and device levels, brings the technology one step closer to real-world applications beyond laboratory demonstrations,\u201d SUN Qingping said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are currently developing an air-conditioner based on this technology. Moving forward, we aim to further enhance energy efficiency, power density, and cost competitiveness of elastocaloric refrigeration systems to accelerate their market adoption as a sustainable cooling solution.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A research team from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has unveiled the world\u2019s first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":900814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,105],"class_list":["post-900813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}