The Use of Nanofluids in Electrocaloric Refrigeration Systems

Electrocaloric cooling is based on electrocaloric materials (ferroelectrics) exhibiting electrocaloric effect, detected in a temperature change of the electrocaloric materials due to the variation of the electric field. Electrocaloric cooling could represent potentially an alternative to classic refrigeration. Electrocaloric cooling is the best refrigeration solution, applied to a electrocaloric materials made by the ferroelectrics materials, placed between CHEX and HHEX and exposed to alternative polarization/depolarization cycle. To vehiculate the refrigerant between CHEX and HHEX, a liquid refrigerant is used: water or a water/ethylene glycol mixture, but innovative liquid refrigerant could be adopted, such as water/nanoparticles in order to enhance the COP and the temperature span ΔT of the nanofluids. In this work we report the simulation results on a active electrocaloric regenerators refrigerator made in parallel plate, utilizing water and nanoparticles (CuO and Al2O3) as liquid refrigerant. The results are reported in terms of COP; power and temperature span ΔT. In this paper, for electrocaloric cooling system, a decoupled multiphysics numerical approach (Electric, Fluid Flow, and Heat Transfer) is developed using COMSOL multiphysics.