A novel electrochemical system with adiabatic pre-charging and pre-discharging processes for efficient refrigeration

Abstract

[EN]The extraordinary thermal-to-electricity conversion efficiency of thermally regenerative electrochemical cycle triggers interest in its reverse counterpart, namely thermally regenerative electrochemical refrigerator (TRER), a promising alternative to conventional cooling devices. Nevertheless, due to three fundamental obstacles, the practically feasible TRER model is still absent, which hinders the development of follow-up research. To break this bottleneck, heating by discharging and cooling by charging effects are innovatively utilized to construct TRER models where the electrochemical counterparts of traditional adiabatic compression and expansion processes, namely adiabatic pre-charging and pre-discharging processes, are proposed and introduced. Significantly, the maximum coefficient of performance (COP) and the COP at maximum cooling power are predicted to achieve up to 40% and 5% of Carnot COP, respectively for the given values of parameters. Moreover, the great potential for efficient refrigeration is highlighted by comparing the obtained results with various refrigeration systems. This work lays the foundation for further experimental investigations and opens a new avenue for constructing other novel electrochemical cycles.