Refrigeration consumes a significant amount of electricity. Dear Lazyweb, if someone out there knows the percentage estimate for the USA and elsewhere I’d appreciate an email from you.

Gadolinium (Symbol: Gd) is a metal with some interesting magnetic properties. When placed in a magnetic field it heats up, then when the magnetic field is removed it cools down. Alloys of GD as well as other concoctions have magnetic properties strong enough to have a new method of cooling, which would be potentially more energy efficient than the familiar refrigerations system used almost globally today. Gd is also interesting because the cost, well today anyway, is not crazy — plus it has a Curie temperature that’s around room temperature.

The familiar system where work is added to make cold go to hot (brush up on your second law of thermodynamics) is your typical vapor compression refrigerator (i.e., the one in you kitchen and your air conditioner), the work the compressor does. There’s an efficiency issue in all of this, as there is in making heat become work — 100% is out of the question., no perpetual motion machines and no free lunch.

So there’s this concept called magnetocaloric refrigeration. Essentially strong magnet fields are used to manipulate the entropy of the system. Now don’t forget, the refrigerant in a magnetic frig is a solid instead of a gas, so a liquid would be used to transfer the heat around, the guts of this frig are completely different from the one in your kitchen.

Most of the development has been in the past 10 years or so though the concept dates back to I think the 1930s. Materials science is a field you might want to check out if you’re entering university and are not intimidated by the sciences, IMHO that’s where some of the good action is going to be in coming years.

Bottom line, the efficiency of the magnetocaloric frig will be significantly superior to the current scheme plus the environmental considerations such as the elimination of toxic liquids make it attractive. It’s a win-win on all fronts. Now off to corner the market in Gadolinium, LOL.