Experimental study on cooling performance of active magnetic regenerators with different structures

Abstract

Using the distilled water as the heat transfer fluid, this paper built an active magnetic regenerator test bench to investigate the influence of crucial parameters on the cooling performance of active magnetic regenerators with different geometries, including the relative angle between Gd plates and magnetic field, the utilization factor, the temperature at the hot side of the regenerator, and the operating frequency. In addition, the performance enhancement potential of the newly proposed perforated parallel-plate regenerator was experimentally studied. The impacts of the perforation ratio and perforation on different thicknesses of plates were discussed. For the parallel-plate active magnetic regenerator with a thickness of 0.4 mm and a plate spacing of 0.35 mm, the 3.4% perforation ratio increases the temperature span between the hot and cold ends of the regenerator by 14.7%∼24.7% at no load condition from the baseline none-perforated parallel-plate regenerator.