A comparison between electrocaloric and magnetocaloric materials for solid state refrigeration

Electrocaloric and magnetic refrigeration are two emerging, solid-state based technology, which could constitute a real chance to overcome vapor compression refrigeration limits. To underline the differences and the affinities concerning such solid-state techniques, in this paper electrocaloric and magnetic refrigeration are compared through some performance parameters. For this purpose, it has been introduced a two-dimensional model, capable to reproduce, in room temperature range, the behaviors of both AMR and AER parallel plates regenerator. AMR and AER are the acronyms of Active Magnetic/Electrocaloric Regenerative cycle, respectively, which are inverse Brayton based thermodynamical cycles. In the model have been tested as refrigerant the most promising magnetic and electrocaloric materials, like Gd, Gd5(SixGe1-x)4, LaFe11.384 Mn0.356Si1.26H1.52, LaFe11.05Co0.94Si1.10, as magnetocaloric, P(VDF-TrFE-CFE)/BSTs, 0.93PMN-0.07PT, PLZTs, as electrocaloric ones. Among them, the PLZT thin film class confers the best results, higher than every magnetocaloric material tested, conferring to electrocaloric refrigeration the real role of the environmental friendly technology of the future.