The ubiquitous heating and cooling technology used today in everything from heat pumps to refrigerators and air conditioners – that make our lives more comfortable, safer and convenient – comes at a price because they fuel global warming.
Irish company Exergyn believes it has found an alternative approach.
Home life as we know it today would not be possible without heat pumps and refrigerators and the technology they are based on. Outside the home too, these essential systems work to keep our supermarket foods cool, preserve medicines and control the temperature of our energy-hungry data centres.
Most heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration technologies require the use of refrigerant gases – hydrofluorocarbons or hydrofluoroolefins. These gases, which have high global warming potential, often leak from equipment, driving further warming.
Exergyn, based at Dublin City University’s innovation hub Alpha, has developed a technology it says eliminates the need for these refrigerant gases, replacing them with a metal alloy that provides a similar performance but without the damaging environmental costs.
“In simple terms, we use a metal instead of a refrigerant gas and that metal cycles between two internal states,” said
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