Magnetic refrigeration at room temperature is of great interest due to a long-term goal of making refrigeration more energy-efficient, less noisy and free of any environmentally hostile materials. A refrigerator utilizing an active magnetic regenerator (AMR) is based on the magnetocaloric effect, which manifests itself as a temperature change in magnetic materials when subjected to a varying magnetic field. In this work we present the current state of magnetic refrigeration research at Risoe DTU with emphasis on the numerical modeling of an existing AMR test machine. A 2D numerical heat-transfer and fluid-flow model that represents the experimental setup is presented. Experimental data of both no-heat load and heat load situations are compared to the model. Moreover, results from the numerical modeling of the permanent magnet design used in the system are presented.
@article{arxiv.0902.0812,
title = {Magnetic cooling at Risoe DTU},
author = {K. K. Nielsen and R. Bjoerk and J. B. Jensen and C. R. H Bahl and N. Pryds and A. Smith and A. Nordentoft and J. Hattel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0902.0812},
year = {2012}
}