Magnetic cooling enables efficient, ‘green’ refrigeration

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esearchers and industry representatives in the refrigeration and air conditioning field will converge in Des Moines later this month to discuss and promote the cause of magnetic refrigeration at the 3rd International Conference on Magnetic Refrigeration at Room Temperature – known in the business as Thermag III. The focus of the four-day event will be on an energy efficient form of refrigeration that replaces gas compressors and ozone-depleting refrigerants with a system that uses special alloys and a magnetic field to provide the cooling and environmentally benign coolants to circulate that cooling power through the refrigeration loop. “Modern compression/expansion refrigeration cycle cooling is a high-energy-demand industry that annually consumes as much as 15 percent of the total electrical energy produced,” said conference organizer Karl Gschneidner, a senior metallurgist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory. Gschneidner is an Anson Marston Distinguished Professor at Iowa State University, a pioneer in magnetic refrigeration and a world-renowned expert in the rare-earth metals used in the technology. “Magnetic cooling and refrigeration is 20 to 30 percent more energy efficient than conventional vapor-compression refrigeration,” Gschneidner said, “The magnetic refrigerants are solids, so the hazardous, ozone-depleting and greenhouse chemicals are completely eliminated, making magnetic refrigeration

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