Magnetic Air Conditioners

No, they’re not exactly the same magnets that plenty of parents use to proudly display their children’s elementary school artwork on the refrigerator door. But magnets could help to bring about something of a revolution in refrigeration – which, in turn, could one day result in the use of Air Conditioners powered by magnetic energy.

As described in an article from Extreme Tech, General Electric (GE) appears to have come up with a new way of using refrigeration sourced from magnetic energy; this method could end up being somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% to 30% more efficient than the tech that’s used to power refrigeration products today – which is a combination of a compressor and a liquid refrigerant.

What’s also remarkable is that GE is the very company that introduced the world to a commercial refrigerator that ran on electricity – almost 100 years ago. As Extreme Tech puts it, “GE hopes that its magnet-based tech can become the refrigeration method of choice for the next 100 years.”

GE’s revolutionary idea works around something known as the magnetocaloric effect, which doesn’t appear to have much to do with using magnets to lose calories. It’s not a new technology; it’s just not been ripe for commercial use until fairly recently.

The effect involves metal parts that rise in temperature as they come into contact with energy from a magnetic field. When the magnet’s power is taken away, those metal parts cool down. If there was a process where this would happen continually, it would be possible to come up with a heat pump that grabs heat from one location and moves it to another. Which is more or less what air conditioners do anyway.

GE, which has reportedly been working on developing the technology for a decade, has been able to create a machine that’s the size of a desk that has significant cooling power. The company started with something considerably larger and less powerful, so it’s hoped that a device capable of being used by ordinary consumers and organizations won’t be long in coming.