Scaling up the magnetocaloric hydrogen liquefaction technology by light rare-earth Laves phases

New publication

2023/05/10

W. Liu, T. Gottschall, F. Scheibel, E. Bykov, N. Fortunato, A.Aubert, H. Zhang, K. Skokov, O. Gutfleisch
Designing magnetocaloric materials for hydrogen liquefaction with light rare-earth Laves phases
J. Phys. Energy 5 034001 (2023).

The magnetocaloric hydrogen liquefaction technology has the potential to revolutionize the liquid hydrogen industry with its high efficiency. While heavy rare-earth materials exhibit excellent magnetocaloric performance, their criticality makes them unsuitable for large-scale applications. In contrast, light rare-earth metals are less critical, making their alloys attractive for scaling up the magnetocaloric hydrogen liquefaction technology. In this study, we have successfully designed a light rare-earth based Laves phase system, (R,R')Al¬2 (R: Pr, R': Nd, Ce), which demonstrates significant magnetic entropy and adiabatic temperature changes within the temperature range of 20 to 77 K. Our design not only presents a highly competitive light rare-earth based material system for magnetocaloric hydrogen liquefaction but also highlights the efficacy of mixing light rare-earth elements on the rare-earth sublattice to tailor the magnetocaloric effects of these materials.

DOI 10.1088/2515-7655/accb0b