High-efficiency magnetic refrigeration using holmium
Open Access
- 19 February 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Nature Communications
- Vol. 12 (1), 1-6
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21234-z
Abstract
Magnetic refrigeration (MR) is a method of cooling matter using a magnetic field. Traditionally, it has been studied for use in refrigeration near room temperature; however, recently MR research has also focused on a target temperature as low as 20 K for hydrogen liquefaction. Most research to date has employed high magnetic fields (at least 5 T) to obtain a large entropy change, which requires a superconducting magnet and, therefore, incurs a large energy cost. Here we propose an alternative highly efficient cooling technique in which small magnetic field changes, Δμ0H ≤ 0.4 T, can obtain a cooling efficiency of −ΔSM/Δμ0H = 32 J kg−1K−1T−1, which is one order of magnitude higher than what has been achieved using typical magnetocaloric materials. Our method uses holmium, which exhibits a steep magnetization change with varying temperature and magnetic field. The proposed technique can be implemented using permanent magnets, making it a suitable alternative to conventional gas compression–based cooling for hydrogen liquefaction.Funding Information
- MEXT | Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (17KK0099, 19H04400, 19H04400)
- JST-Mirai Program Grant Number JPMJMI18A3, Japan.
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