A study of a cooling device based on the electrocaloric effect

Abstract

I describe our study on a cooling device that is based on the electrocaloric effect (ECE). The ECE causes increases and decreases in the temperature of a dielectric material by changing the electric field. I used a multi layer ceramic capacitor (MLC) to demonstrate the temperature change based on the ECE. The temperature change of commercial MLCs can be controlled by applying a voltage to them and the maximum change is 0.55 K when using 300 V. However, these changes occurred sequentially by applying and removing the voltage. Therefore, it was difficult to apply this phenomenon to a cooling device. I used a heat pipe that had an anisotropic heat conduction feature in this study to separate the heating and cooling. I developed a cooling device consisting of MLCs and a heat pipe containing acetone as the working fluid. The MLCs were set in the bottom of the heat pipe as the cold side and the other side of the heat pipe was attached to a heat sink as the hot side. Only the heat of the ECE in this device was transferred to the heat sink. The temperature of the cold side decreased by applying and removing the voltage periodically. This device demonstrated that the temperature of an MLC dropped 0.49 K when using 300 V at 0.10 Hz frequency. © 2013 The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers.