SMALL SCALE ELECTROCALORIC COOLING DEVICE WITH AN ACTIVE HEAT REGENERATOR

摘要

In recent years materials with the electrocaloric effect have attracted a lot of attention since they could present the basis for a new generation of coolers. A lot of effort has been put in searching and investigating the electrocaloric materials, however, considerably less attention was given to ideas on how to design an electrocaloric cooling device. In this paper we discuss how to construct an electrocaloric cooling device based on active heat regenerator that is already known from the field of magnetocaloric cooling where it proved to be the best solution so far. A small scale electrocaloric cooling device is presented, in which lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate (PMN-PT) ceramic plates were used as the active elements of the regenerator. The first results of the experiment show the establishment of temperature span between the hot and the cold side of the regenerator.