Air conditioning, refrigeration, and other cooling technologies account for more than 20 percent of today’s global energy consumption, and hydrofluorocarbons, used as refrigerants in vapor compression systems, have a global warming potential thousands of times greater than carbon dioxide.
In a recent issue of Science, the team led by Professors Ichiro Takeuchi, Reinhard Radermacher, and Yunho Hwang introduce a high-performance elastocaloric cooling system that not only meets climate change concerns but could represent the next generation of cooling devices.