Vapour compression and caloric refrigeration in combination for a new hybrid refrigeration system

Abstract

Although caloric refrigeration systems, such as magnetic and elastocaloric ones have shown promising potential in the last decade, their application in stand-alone applications remains scarce. Namely, they can provide high COP values and sufficient cooling power but only at a low temperature span between the heat source and the heat sink. However, the performance of the caloric refrigeration systems drops significantly at higher temperature spans (above 30 K), which are usually required in most common refrigeration applications. This work introduces a new concept or future application that matches perfectly with the current state of development of caloric refrigeration technologies, which is their hybridization with vapour compression systems (VCS) through subcooling. In subcooling applications, the required temperature span is low, therefore, the caloric systems can be used to boost the operation of vapour compression refrigeration systems toward higher efficiencies. Based on experimentally obtained data of different prototypes (magnetic refrigeration system, elastocaloric refrigeration system and CO2 transcritical refrigeration plant) the energy results and optimum operating conditions of the hybrid caloric-VCS systems will be presented.