Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Driving system (motor and related costs);
Pump and pipework costs;
Costs of valves, sensors, control and regulation system;
Cost of heat exchangers;
Housing costs.
ned on the
selling prices of those (which include margins), but one should consider the
manufacturing costs.
Furthermore, the two technologies are comparable if they operate at the same
temperature span as well as the ef
When compared to existing technologies, the costs should not be de
ciency of the magnetoca-
loric energy conversion device is higher than the comparable conventional tech-
nology for the same operating parameters of the heating, cooling or electric power
(heat pumps; refrigerators, chillers, air conditioners; power generators, respectively)
and the same temperature conditions, this can be then be added to the analyses that
also concern the operating costs. However, based on our experience, one should
note that investors usually do not concern themselves about operating costs, but
only investments. Therefore, in such a case it is helpful if additionally the ef
ciency. When the ef
ciency
labelling is provided, because it may in
uence the added value of the product.
Moreover, an additional lifecycle assessment (LCA) is required. For conven-
tional refrigeration technologies there are a large number of such studies (see as an
example Horie [
49
], Vendrusculo et al. [
50
]).
To date, the only LCA on magnetic refrigeration at room temperature was
performed by Monfared et al. [
51
], a team representing experts in conventional
compressor-based refrigeration. They found that magnetic refrigeration has a larger
environmental impact than conventional compressor-based refrigeration due to the
use of rare-earth materials in the magnets, and that recycling processes for such
materials are important.
An important note by authors of this topic for future LCAs suggests that these
should be performed by a team that has good knowledge and experience of both
comparable technologies. And in such an analysis one has to take care when
comparing the emerging technology (with a lot of potential of improvements) with
the mature technology. Namely, a lot of different technological issues, which today
represent an obstacle, can in the future of magnetic refrigeration have a simple
solution. Therefore, different scenarios have to be created, which take into account
particular improvements. One such example is the substantial increase in the power
density of a device.
Additional search on global sources of materials and their future availability (see
as an example Du and Graedel [
52
], Graf and Held [
53
], de Boer and Lammertsma
[
54
], Walters et al. [
55
] and Moss et al. [
56
]), including recycling (e.g. Binnemans
et al. [
57
] and Liu et al. [
58
]) should support such studies.
fl
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