Large heat flux in electrocaloric multilayer capacitors

Abstract

Multi layer capacitors (MLCs) are considered the most promising refrigerant elements for the design and development of electrocaloric cooling devices. Recently, the heat transfer of these MLCs has been considered. However, the heat exchange with the surrounding environment has been poorly addressed. In this work, we measure by infrared thermography the temperature change versus time in four different heat exchange configurations. Depending on the configurations, Newtonian and non-Newtonian regimes with their corresponding Biot number are determined, providing useful thermal characteristics. Indeed, in the case of large area thermal pad contacts, heat transfer coefficients up to 3400 W · m−2 · K−1 were obtained, showing that the standard (non-optimised) MLCs already reach the needs for designing efficient prototypes. We also determined the ideal Brayton cooling power in case of thick wires contact that varied between 3.4 mW and 9.8 mW for operating frequencies varying from 0.25 Hz to 1 Hz. While only heat conduction was considered here, our work provides some design rules for improving heat exchanges in future devices.