Electrocaloric regenerators

Cooling with solid-state electrocaloric materials has been intensively studied in recent years. Despite these efforts, the cooling industry is still waiting for a convincing, competitive demonstrator that takes over the challenge.

In this talk, I will introduce the electrocaloric effect and the best materials exhibiting this effect. The core of the presentation will be about cooling devices based on electrocaloric materials. More specifically, I will give details about fluid-based electrocaloric regenerators. These devices are subtle to design and use because one needs to combine materials science, thermodynamics and electrical engineering to have them running properly.

Recent results obtained on electrocaloric regenerators using lead scandium tantalate multilayer capacitors will be disclosed, showing that it is possible to reach temperature spans larger than 20 K at room temperature and cooling power of several watts with a few grams of active material.