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Active TRL 2 (started at 2, targeting 4)
NASA utilizes refrigeration for a range of stowage, biological/medical, and personnel thermal management applications. However, the use of refrigerants can impose risks associated with both personnel safety and mission success/duration that requires careful refrigerant leak monitoring, replacement, and pressure/temperature control. Exacerbating these concerns, recent legislation mandates the phase-down of production, procurement, and usage of high global warming potential (GWP) hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) such as R134a/R236fa used in existing vapor compression systems. Alternative refrigerants such as HFO-1234yf, ammonia, and carbon dioxide are being considered, but often-times trade a GWP-advantage for disadvantages related to flammability, toxicity, thermodynamic and transport properties (lower-COP), stability, and/or equipment costs. Thus, there is a desire to move away from standard high-GWP vapor compression refrigeration approaches and adopt alternatives to improve platform efficiency/endurance and accommodate recent GWP regulatory drivers. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, in collaboration with Barrow Green LLC., will develop novel gradient-structured (GS) NiTi materials and low-force bending-mode elastocaloric regeneration cooling architectures to advance the performance of refrigeration systems for NASA exploration applications. We will explore laser-induced gradient structuring of nanograined NiTi materials to spatially tune grain size in monolithic NiTi samples. This facile localized grain refinement approach will yield a high-throughput methodology to produce bulk NiTi materials with latent heats exceeding 8 J/g, thermal conductivities from 12 to 22 W/mK, and low stress hysteresis (~60 MPa). Critically, the combination of these salient properties will result in materials with coefficients of performance (COP) exceeding most standard elastocaloric materials (target 10-25). The developed materials are critical to enabling a novel low-force bending-mode regenerative elastocaloric cooling architecture. The rotary-based elastocaloric cooling design has the benefits of discrete hot and cold zones, continuous (as opposed to oscillating) cooling, inexpensive rotary actuation, and scalability, which represents a significant advancement for compact, long lifetime, and inexpensive elastocaloric cooling.
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