High-performance thermomagnetic generator controlled by a magnetocaloric switch.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37558655.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-40634-x and PMC identifier 10412618.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Low grade waste heat accounts for ~65% of total waste heat, but conventional waste heat recovery technology exhibits low conversion efficiency for low grade waste heat recovery. Hence, we designed a thermomagnetic generator for such applications. Unlike its usual role as the coil core or big magnetic yoke in previous works, here the magnetocaloric material acts as a switch that controls the magnetic circuit. This makes it not only have the advantage of flux reversal of the pretzel-like topology, but also present a simpler design, lower magnetic stray field, and higher performance by using less magnetocaloric material than preceding devices. The effects of key structural and system parameters were studied through a combination of experiments and finite element simulations. The optimized max power density P<sub>Dmax</sub> produced by our device is significantly higher than those of other existing active thermomagnetic, thermo, and pyroelectric generators. Such high performance shows the effectiveness of our topology design of magnetic circuit with magnetocaloric switch.