Development of a rotary magnetic refrigerator

A team of researchers have developed and built a prototype of a rotary magnetic refrigerator (MR). The principle of the operation of the presented magnetic refrigerator is based on the rotary movement of active magnetic regenerators (AMRs) with a magnetocaloric material and on the magnetic field generated by permanent magnets Nd-Fe-B. The first part of the paper presents the development and analysis of the structure for generating the magnetic field and the basic operational principle of the magnetic refrigerator concerned, and the second part gives a description of the development process for certain key elements of the complete magnetic refrigeration system. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.