Researchers from the University of Porto’s Faculty of Sciences will build a “green” mini-fridge which, based on the principle of magnetic refrigeration, can help get “faster and more efficient” results in disease detection tests. The project, In a statement, reveals يكشف FCUP intends, in a statement, to use the “magnetic refrigeration principle” to build a micro- and nanoscale prototype of a “green” refrigerator.
“Currently, there are only large-size models in Portugal, which are tentatively considering replacing refrigerators in the future,” he asserts. The project, funded under the Bilateral Relations Fund for EEA Grants and developed in collaboration with researchers from the Institute of Energy Technology (in Norway), aims to demonstrate “that it is possible, more quickly, to help respond to disease detection” .
Quoted in the document, João Horta Bello, a researcher at the Institute of Advanced Materials, Nanotechnology and Photonics at the University of Porto and lead of the project, explains that the prototype will consist of an “acrylic plate with a micro-channel through which the liquid consists of nanoparticles immersed in the liquid.” “At one end, we will have what we want to calm down, like chip From a computer, for example, and on the other side, there is a cold end to which the heat to be cooled is transferred. With the nanoparticles immersed in the liquid, the heat exchange will be much faster,” he says.
These nanoparticles come from smart materials, which have the ability to “change their size according to temperature, magnetic field and pressure” and can be, for example, metal alloys composed of three elements (rare earth, silicon and germanium). Once this speed is demonstrated, the researcher believes the prototype could “help disease detection tests, which use biological samples, to give faster and more efficient results.”
“Usually these tests have to go through cycles of different temperatures, heating or cooling, and this can be one of the applications of magnetic refrigeration on a small scale,” he adds. So the researchers will test whether magnetic cooling at the micro- and nano-scale is as efficient as current large models.
In addition to the prototype, the project also aims to promote cooperation between the two research groups, namely, through the exchange of students and researchers, the application to research funds and the dissemination of the importance of cooling technologies within the scope of new environmental policies. It has a duration of one and a half years, the project budget is 13,750 euros.
