Design, development and testing of a compressive thermoelastic cooling system.

Thermoelastic cooling was recently proposed as a candidate to substitute the vapor compression cooling. In order to prove its feasibility, a thermoelastic cooling prototype system using the compression drive mechanism and nitinol tubes working as functioning material has been designed, constructed, and tested in this study. The prototype consisted of two beds filled with nitinol tubes, a linear actuator as the compressing machine, and a sophisticated water circulation system to transfer heat and improve the system’s efficiency. The entire system was operated under the reverse Brayton cycle, which was developed in a previous numerical study. As the first endeavour in this field, the measured maximum system temperature lift reached 1.5 K as a baseline for this prototype. We also achieved maximum of 38 W net cooling from the prototype. Although current research proved the thermoelastic cooling concept, new designs are in progress as following studies.