Modelling and simulation of regenerators with complex flow arrangements for active magnetocaloric refrigeration

Compared to a conventional vapor compression refrigera-tion system, a magnetocaloric refrigerator has many advantages, such as potentially high efficiency, low vibration and avoidance of refrigerants that deplete the ozone layer and cause the green-house effect. As a main component of the active magnetic re-generative refrigerator, the regenerator plays an important role in the cooling performance and efficiency of the whole system. However, the regenerator design is constrained by several exter-nal factors, such as the geometry of the magnetic field source and flow resistance.
In this work, novel regenerators with complex flow arrange-ments, providing high performance at lower pressure drop, are investigated. Correspondingly a one dimensional model is pre-sented and comparative studies between novel and conventional regenerators are carried out by simulation. The effect of regen-erator geometries and different flow arrangements on the cool-ing performance, pressure drop and efficiency are investigated. In particular, the effect of so-called dead volume on the perfor-mance of a regenerator is researched.