Galinstan liquid metal as the heat transfer fluid in magnetic refrigeration

•The fluid thermal conductivity greatly affects the performance of a magnetic regenerator.•The use of the liquid metal Galinstan as a heat transfer fluid is investigated.•Galinstan was found not to be aggressive to gadolinium at room temperature.•With the same COP, Galinstan can provide four times more cooling capacity than water.•The use of this liquid metal can lead to a high demand for pumping power. Room-temperature magnetic refrigeration is a promising technology in which cooling is achieved by exploiting a special property of some materials, the “magnetocaloric effect” (MCE), i.e., the ability of the material to change its temperature when it undergoes changes in the applied external magnetic field. For magnetic field variations on the order of 1–1.5 T, the MCE results in small adiabatic temperature changes of a few degrees so, in most cases, the designs and prototypes presented by various research groups employ active magnetic regeneration to increase the temperature span required for practical cooling devices. The effectiveness of the regenerator, and thus of the refrigeration device, depends heavily on the properties of the heat transfer fluid, which is usually a water-based mixture. High values of the fluid thermal conductivity greatly affect the heat transfer between the MCE and the fluid allowing faster operation and higher cooling capacity. In this study, the use of a gallium based liquid metal, i.e., Galinstan, is investigated to quantify this improvement. Galinstan was found not to be aggressive to gadolinium at room temperature and it resulted not affected by magnetic induction. The authors report the results of an extensive simulation campaign to characterize the performance of an active magnetic regenerator made of 0.5 mm thick gadolinium sheets using Galinstan as a heat transfer fluid. The results are compared to those of the same device using water; friction is also accounted for since the high density of this liquid metal leads to a high demand for pumping power. On average, a more than tenfold increase in cooling capacity was observed when using Galinstan, but the COP was severely penalized by the higher frictional losses. To avoid this effect, the cycle time and the utilization factor must be adjusted, or the geometry changed by using thicker sheets and ducts for the same Gd weight. In this way a cooling increase of 400% is achieved with the same COP.