Could Chinese-led team’s shape-shifter fridge coolant help freeze out HFC greenhouse gases?

Refrigerants such as hydrofluorocarbons are greenhouse gases with a polluting effect far worse than carbon dioxide

Chinese-US study says their powerful technology using shape memory alloy tubes could help phase out HFC use for commercial refrigeration

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The findings of the team of researchers from Xian Jiaotong University, Beihang University and the University of Maryland have been published in Science magazine. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 6:00pm, 3 Jun 2023

A team of scientists in China and the United States has developed a refrigerator that derives its cooling power from shape-changing tubes.

According to the researchers, their environmentally friendly refrigerator is capable of a large temperature span, is the most powerful cooler of its type and holds great promise for commercial utilisation.

Commonly used cooling systems work through a compressor that circulates the refrigerant substance between the condenser on the back and the evaporator inside. As the coolant keeps changing from liquid to gas and back, it carries heat away and creates a cool environment for storing food.

The central part of the multimode elastocaloric cooling system with four bundles of NiTi tubes. Photo: Qian Suxin

But some refrigerants, such as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), are super-polluting greenhouse gases. Their global warming potential is hundreds or even thousands of times worse than that of carbon dioxide.

The researchers said the new technology might help phase out HFC use, with their findings published in the peer-reviewed Science magazine in May.

Stretching a metal tube can help it create steady periodic cooling in a young technology called elastocaloric cooling, named after the physical characteristics of shape memory alloys, which are highly elastic metals.

In response to mechanical stress, some shape memory alloys can become temporarily deformed – a process that is often accompanied by heat absorption.