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gpm 11 hours ago

Yes you can! Not with peltier elements, but with elastocaloric (phase changes in solid metal induced by stress) and maybe magnetocaloric (phase change induced by magnetic fields) heat pumps.

There's engineering challenges here, but I believe the science is pretty clear that in principle these beat gas phase change systems.

cogman10 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

IIRC from reading up on these in the past, you need a pretty large input energy in order to make them work. The elastocaloric ones are also super loud IIRC.

balfirevic 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I believe the science is pretty clear that in principle these beat gas phase change systems.

Do you know by how much?

gpm 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Gas phase change systems in practice are up to about 60% efficiency (relative to an idealized carnot cycle), magnetocaloric systems in labs have been something like 70%, and elastocaloric 80%.

Edit: And just for reference peltier devices are usually 10-15% efficiency on this scale. So I suppose this new one is somewhere in the 20-30% range.

cenamus 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Probably very applicable, this video from Ben

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfmrvxB154w