Conference update: Des Moines

During the conference the Working Party on Magnetic Refrigeration at Room Temperature of the International Institute of Refrigeration held one of its periodical meetings. All conference members were invited to participate and they where practically fully present. The President of the working party, Peter W. Egolf, proposed to work together with a lower level of con¬fi¬den¬tia¬lity till the magnetic refrigeration technology more closely approaches some refrigeration markets. He said it doesn't help anybody, if the ge¬ne¬ral interest on magnetic refrigeration decreases by research funding organizations and in¬du¬strial companies, because of a not fast enough ap¬proach to practice. Furthermore, Egolf proposed a working group to create some standards for the magnetic refrigeration domain. Especially the determination of efficiencies of machines is very dif¬fi¬cult and results of researchers from different in¬sti¬tu¬tes in different countries cannot be compared. It was decided to take a final de¬cision on this idea at Thermag IV in 2011 in China. One could see that numerous industrial partners show a high interest in a standardization and even take into consideration to already start with some previous inofficial activities. It was also de¬ci¬ded to organize some summer school on magnetic refrigeration in the near future. After a voting of the working party members it is given that Thermag IV will be held in Baotou (in the Inner Mongolia) in China and will be organized by Prof. Huang from the Baotou Rare Earth Institute. Attached is a report on the THERMAG III IIR-co-sponsored conference which was held in Des Moines last month