What’s next for the IIR Thermag conferences and magnetic refrigeration

The attraction of magnetic refrigeration

Since 2005, the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR) has been organising a biennial conference focused on magnetic cooling in room temperatures, after a dedicated IIR Working Group was set up and the magnetocaloric effect produced by specific elements, such as gadolinium, was discovered. Each conference is more and more successful due to a growing interest from both researchers and industrialists.

This year, approximately 200 people (see photo) attended the latest edition of the Thermag VII conference held in Turin (Italy) on September 11-14, among which more than one third came from industry.

The papers from the Thermag VII conference are now available for download from the Fridoc database. IIR members can their download quotas. View the Thermag VII papers.

Will your next household refrigerator be a magnetic one?

Several companies are about to market refrigerated equipment (household refrigerators, refrigerated display cabinets for supermarkets…) using magnetic refrigeration. Two companies, namely Cooltech based in Strasbourg (France) and Camfridge based in Cambridge (United Kingdom), both sponsored the Thermag VII conference and exhibited the equipment currently in the testing phase.

At present, the investment costs for this equipment are higher than those for traditional devices and comparing the energy efficiency of both systems requires additional standardisation works; something which the IIR has already started to address.

Some technical developments are still needed and this is the purpose of ELICiT, a research project supported by the European Commission, which the IIR has been involved in. To this end, the IIR organised the very last workshop of the project, as well as a progress meeting of the IIR Industrial Sub-Working Group on Magnetic Refrigeration concerning the implementation of the project on the standards developed by the consortium.