High Performance of Carbon Nanotube Refrigerators

TE Cantuario and AF Fonseca, ANNALEN DER PHYSIK, 531, 1800502 (2019).

DOI: 10.1002/andp.201800502

Vapor-compression dominates the market for refrigeration devices due to low cost and relatively high efficiency. However, the most efficient vapor refrigerants are either ozone depleting or global warming substances. Solid-state cooling is a young field of research with promising results toward the development of new, efficient, and environment friendly technology for a new generation of refrigeration devices. One of these methods is based on the so-called elastocaloric effect (ECE), which consists of a temperature variation of a system in response to the application of adiabatic stresses. Although most of the literature describes the study of ECE solid-state cooling based on materials undergoing phase-transitions, a study recently predicted that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) present ECE as large as 30 K for 3% of strain. This motivates research toward the development of nanorefrigerators. As nobody knows the efficiency of such an ECE-based CNT nanorefrigerator, here, significantly high coefficient of performance values of 4.1 and 6.5, and extracted heat per weight as large as 40Jg(-1) are reported for a zigzag CNT nanorefrigerator operating in an Otto-like thermodynamic cycle. This efficiency is shown to overcome that of some other ECE materials.

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