Paper No 017 – Solid State (Metal Hydride) Refrigerant Based Air Conditioner and Freezer Systems – 13th IEA Heat Pump Conference, Jeju, Korea
Chlorine and Fluorine containing refrigerant based heat pumps currently consumes over 2,000 Trillion-Watt hours per year of electric power [1]. Current refrigerants used in these devices have climate harming “Global Warming Potentials” (GWP) that are thousands of times higher than that of CO2 gas. This paper explores a novel heat pump technology based on solidstate (metal hydride based) refrigerant employing hydrogen compression. This paper provides performance data for solid state refrigerant heat pumps for air conditioning (AC) and Ultra Low Temperature (ULT) freezer systems. Operational data, lessons learnt, and optimal practices needed to deploy these systems are reviewed. Key components in the system are analyzed, including the metal hydride heat exchangers, (electrochemical and other) Hydrogen compressors, and system controls.