Electrocaloric Cooling - making a difference

Refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pumps (RACHP) account for 19% of UK electricity demand or around 10% of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At the 2015 EU meeting in Paris, the EU agreed to intensify reductions in carbon emission further from 2020 to 2030. This will include a further 40% GHG reduction, through much greater use of renewable technologies and a massive increase in energy efficiency. Several promising alternative innovative heating and cooling technologies are under development such as elastocaloric, magnetocaloric, thermoelectric, barocaloric and electrocaloric. While the magnetocaloric effect has been extensively studied since the discovery by Emil Warburg in 1881. Electrocaloric cooling (EC) has had much less interest but is an emerging, innovative and potential low carbon technology. Although the first experimental measurement of the EC effect were reported in the early 1930s the scale was very small. This changed with the recent discovery of ‘giant EC effect’ (date) since then the practical application of EC heating and cooling has been subject to much research and commercial applications are now on the radar.