Experimental and Theoretical Study of the Cooling Power of a Magnetic Refrigerator Prototype

Measurements of cooling power of the magnetic refrigeration unit designed and constructed at University of Applied Sciences and Art – Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland are presented. The cooling power measurements were made with different operation frequencies. In addition, measurements with a two layer regenerator with Curie temperatures of 8 °C and 20 °C are presented. Also experimental cooling powers of recent magnetic refrigerators, found in the literature, are presented. The different machines are compared. The 1D model magnetic refrigeration model is used to calculate the measured cooling power. It was found that without thermal losses the model over estimates the measured performance. Including the thermal losses the calculations are close to the measured cooling power values for both gadolinium and gadolinium-terbium compound.