Modeling of an Elastocaloric Cooling System for Determining Efficiency

Nora Bachmann, Daniel Schwarz, David Bach, Olaf Schäfer-Welsen, Thomas Koch and Kilian Bartholomé
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Nora Bachmann: Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques IPM, Georges-Koehler-Allee 301, 79110 Freiburg, Germany
Daniel Schwarz: Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques IPM, Georges-Koehler-Allee 301, 79110 Freiburg, Germany
David Bach: Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques IPM, Georges-Koehler-Allee 301, 79110 Freiburg, Germany
Olaf Schäfer-Welsen: Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques IPM, Georges-Koehler-Allee 301, 79110 Freiburg, Germany
Thomas Koch: Institute of Internal Combustion Engines IFKM, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
Kilian Bartholomé: Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques IPM, Georges-Koehler-Allee 301, 79110 Freiburg, Germany

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 14, 1-14

Abstract: When it comes to covering the growing demand for cooling power worldwide, elastocalorics offer an environmentally friendly alternative to compressor-based cooling technology. The absence of harmful and flammable coolants makes elastocalorics suitable for energy applications such as battery cooling. Initial prototypes of elastocaloric systems, which transport heat by means of thermal conduction or convection, have already been developed. A particularly promising solution is the active elastocaloric heat pipe (AEH), which works with latent heat transfer by the evaporation and condensation of a fluid. This enables a fast and efficient heat transfer in a compression-based elastocaloric cooling system. In this publication, we present a simulation model of the AEH based on MATLAB-Simulink. The model showed very good agreement with the experimental data pertaining to the maximum temperature span and maximum cooling power. Hereby, non-measurable variables such as efficiency and heat fluxes in the cooling system are accessible, which allows the analysis of individual losses including the dissipation effects of the material, non-ideal isolation, losses in heat transfer from the elastocaloric material to the fluid, and other parasitic heat flux losses. In total, it can be shown that using this AEH-approach, an optimized system can achieve up to 67% of the material efficiency.

Keywords: elastocaloric cooling; simulation; efficiency; analytic model; latent heat transfer; shape memory alloy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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