Barocaloric materials for zero-carbon heat pumps

加热和冷却对我们的生活至关重要。我们依靠它们来保证家庭和车辆的舒适性，企业需要为生产工作场所和工业流程提供加热和冷却。总的来说，空间和工艺加热和冷却是英国能源消耗的最大贡献，也是温室气体排放的最大来源。加热主要通过燃烧天然气提供，而冷却主要通过压缩挥发性氟化气体提供。然而，这些传统的技术既不高效，对环境也不友好。Barocaloric效应是指当受到压力变化时，在机械响应固体中发生的可逆热变化。这些效应类似于当前热泵中利用的气体中的压力诱导热变化，但是它们承诺更高的能量效率并且减少对有害温室气体的需要。我们的目标是开发基于新型压热混合复合材料的节能压热热泵，该新型压热混合复合材料联合收割机结合了有机压热材料的最佳特性，即极大的压力驱动热变化，以及最好的无机压热材料，即高导热性和低导热性。这种规模的技术转型将需要制定定制的经济和政策战略，以便成功部署。因此，我们的目标是制定一个完全整合的定制经济和政策战略，以支持不列颠哥伦比亚热泵的创新，直到商业化。实现使用压热材料而不是气体运行的热泵将允许脱碳加热和冷却，提供能源独立，并使英国成为这一新兴技术的世界领导者。

Heating and cooling are essential to our lives. We rely on them for comfort in our homes and vehicles, and businesses need heating and cooling for productive workplaces and industrial processes. Taken together, space and process heating and cooling represent the biggest contribution to the UK's energy consumption, and the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions.Heating is primarily provided from burning natural gas, whereas cooling is primarily provided from compressing volatile fluorinated gases. However, these conventional technologies are neither efficient, not friendly to the environment.Barocaloric effects are reversible thermal changes that occur in mechanically responsive solids when subjected to changes in pressure. These effects are analogous to the pressure-induced thermal changes in gases that are exploited in current heat pumps, but they promise higher energy efficiencies and obviate the need for harmful greenhouse gases.We aim at developing an energy-efficient barocaloric heat pump based on novel barocaloric hybrid composite materials that combine the best properties of organic barocaloric materials, namely extremely large pressure-driven thermal changes, and the best of inorganic barocaloric materials, namely high thermal conductivity and low hysteresis.A technological transformation of this magnitude will require the development of bespoke economic and policy strategies for its successful deployment. Therefore, we aim at developing a fully integrated bespoke economic and policy strategy that will support the innovation of BC heat pumps through to commercialisation.The achievement of heat pumps that operate using barocaloric materials instead of gases will permit decarbonising heating and cooling, provide energy independence, and enable the UK to become the world leader on this emerging technology.