Climate-friendly AC: Elastocaloric Cooling System
A team of Maryland Engineering Professors has introduced a high-performance elastocaloric cooling system that could represent the next generation of cooling devices. The system relies on pushing and pulling pieces of metal to create cooling, bypassing chemical refrigerants. The key feature is the compression and release of fatigue-resistant nickel-titanium tubes configured in a versatile, multimode heat exchange architecture. The team says it's possible to improve the performance of its system enough to make the technology commercially viable within several years.