Einstein's eco-friendly refrigerator concept dusted off, put to good use

Given how large the green bandwagon has become, it's no real shock to see an energy-saving concept from the 1930s being exhumed and investigated further. Scientists at Oxford University have begun to take a closer look at an early invention from the great Albert Einstein in order to hopefully create refrigerators (and appliances in general) that could be used completely without electricity. Back in the day, Sir Albert created a mechanism that had no moving parts and used only pressurized gases to keep things chilly. Once compressors became more efficient in the 50s, however, the idea was tossed aside. Now, the idea obviously has greater appeal, and if things keep humming along nicely, a completed prototype should be erected by the year's end.

[Via Physorg]

[GadgetTamer @ Sep 27th 2008 12:15PM]

This is probably just me running short on brainpower this morning, but to pressurize gas don't you need to compress it... with a compressor?

[hiroo @ Sep 27th 2008 12:49PM]

I guess the point seems to be that you only compress it once when installing it; you don't have to continue running the compressor during operation like modern fridges.

[happy_penguin @ Sep 27th 2008 5:37PM]

In normal refrigeration, compressing the gas to the condenser coil chills it and when it expands to the evaporator coil it releases the heat. It's a constant process. You can't just compress it and that is that.

How this thing works is beyond me but wiki offers some hints:

"The machine is a single-pressure absorption refrigerator, similar in design to a gas absorption refrigerator. The refrigeration cycle uses ammonia (pressure-equalizing fluid), butane (refrigerant), and water (absorbing fluid), has no moving parts, and does not require electricity to operate, needing only a heat source, e.g. a small gas burner."



I think this is basically the same as the propane operated refrigerators used in campers which require no electricity but work with a small flame.

[Martin @ Sep 27th 2008 12:19PM]

thats genius!

[KarlW @ Sep 27th 2008 2:53PM]

Tell me about it - this guy's on a roll!

[joeyboy @ Sep 27th 2008 12:27PM]

Albert Einstein was never knighted... so no "Sir Albert". I guess if you won Nobelprize(s) you don't need the Queen to tell you that you did well :)

[Bobby @ Sep 27th 2008 4:32PM]

that is why he stayed genius.

[Almeida @ Sep 27th 2008 8:37PM]

He never gained Knighthood because he was GERMAN and then naturalized AMERICAN but never british. You have to study more History and Geography pal...

[DeadlySeven @ Oct 1st 2008 9:33PM]

You are half right. You should check your own history Pal if you are going to write people off. He was born in Germany, he was stateless for a short period. then naturalised in Austria(debatable), then Switzerland, then the US retaining dual Swiss/US citizenship. You don't need to be British to be knighted, but if you are not British or Irish generally you cannot your the "Sir" title you use KBE (Knight of the Order of the British Empire) .

[liv @ Sep 28th 2008 9:46AM]

He used "Sir Einstein" in the same way the editors here use "El Jobso"... It's just a pun... don't take it literally...

[George$ @ Sep 27th 2008 12:39PM]

Poisonous gas (and Corrosive) (ammonia) and highly flammable gas (Butane). Great progress. The reason why the world went with freon in the first place was because it was 1. Non-toxic, 2. Non-flammable. and 3. Non-corrosive. Ammonia based refrigeration existed for 50 years before home use because ammonia was considered too dangerous in case of leaks. And this was before the sue-everybody lawyers...

[Cardbored @ Sep 27th 2008 12:38PM]

They're also looking to replace those gases with different ones, part of their "quadrupling" of the efficiency

[BigD145 @ Sep 27th 2008 1:08PM]

Freon is toxic, just not in the "Acute Toxicity" category. It's a carcinogen and is likely to contaminate groundwater.

[Chuck @ Sep 27th 2008 1:13PM]

Perhaps they'll make a gold model especially for lawyers with a small leak. Solves the problem, no?

[treetrunk @ Sep 27th 2008 2:23PM]

Way to completely miss the point. Improving the design such as to use different gases is the whole point of the research.

[m @ Sep 27th 2008 2:58PM]

yeah, because you'd never want to sue anybody if a faulty appliance killed your children. in the absence of effective consumer protection (remember the toxic toy scare? how about that poison baby formula?), we should all be happy we have recourse to legal action. if you believe otherwise, you've been suckered by the medical and industrial lobbyists, or their proxies in the republican party.

[james1095 @ Sep 29th 2008 5:21PM]

It depends. Freon is a trade name owned by DuPont used on their fluorocarbon refrigerants. R-12 was by far the most common for years, used as both refrigerant and propellant in aerosol cans. This is a chloroflourocarbon (CFC) and has been mostly phased out due to its ozone depletion properties. It is a very stable compound and stays in the upper atmosphere for a long time before it breaks down. R-22 is still in widespread use in residential air conditioning, though it too is starting to be phased out and replaced by R-410. R-22 is a hydrochlorofluorocarbon, HCFC it still breaks down ozone, but it is a much less stable compound and breaks down in the atmosphere much sooner, so the ozone depletion potential is only 5% that of R-12. Most domestic refrigerators and automotive AC, aerosol cans, etc have been using R-134 for a while now. R-134 is a hydrofluorocarbon HFC, this does not deplete ozone, although it is categorized as a greenhouse gas. None of these substances are toxic, they are all gasses at room temperature and atmospheric pressure, however they can displace oxygen and lead to suffocation. Some of them can be broken down into other nasty compounds though, as I recall R-22 is converted to phosgene when exposed to flame.

As for this "new" refrigeration technology, as someone else said, it sounds like the propane powered refrigerators used in campers. They never got wide use outside of certain applications because they are generally not very efficient, but perhaps they have found a way to improve this. Regardless, energy is required in one form or another, a refrigerator is a heat pump, it transfers heat from inside the box to outside, which cools down your food. You can try to improve the efficiency of this pumping, but you can't do it for free, those pesky laws of thermodynamics will get you every time.

[Shoeb Khan @ Sep 27th 2008 12:54PM]

The man was a genius. yet he refused when an offer was made to appoint him as the Prime Minister of Israel.

[GenBanks @ Sep 27th 2008 1:21PM]

Like you say, the man was a genius... He probably had his reasons ;)

[hiroo @ Sep 27th 2008 1:36PM]

Maybe he refused BECAUSE he was a genius... or he simply knew that a genius scientist may not become a brilliant politician. Or, maybe because it was Israel.

[Matt @ Sep 27th 2008 2:18PM]

He was offered the presidency of Israel, which is AFAIK just a figurehead role.

[mauro @ Sep 28th 2008 1:24PM]

"mauro cesar bandeira de oliveira"

[rallyprox @ Sep 27th 2008 12:59PM]

They are referring to absorption refrigeration. Once the gas is compressed, and the system is sealed there is no more compressors used in the system. They use a head source and a heat sink and the temperature difference between them, with the different vaporization points of the two refrigerants, allows for one side to become really cold. Typically,now a days, the heat source is something along the lines of waste heat from a water heaters. At current however, absorption refrigeration is not all that efficient, and does not bring the temperature down very low. The trade off is that they use waste heat. I for one would like to see these used in residential applications like air conditioning and refrigerators.

[--------- @ Sep 27th 2008 1:06PM]

Absorption refrigeration has been in continuous use for many many years. Most RV and marine refrigerators use a system like this, simply because they can be powered by propane.

[SnowB @ Sep 27th 2008 2:28PM]

I had one of these refrigerators, manufactured in the 1940s, in my apartment in London. Heat was supplied by a tiny gas flame burning continuously and costing a tiny fraction of the electricity required for a modern compressor-based refrigerator. It got plenty cold enough to keep food and had a small ice tray (that was constantly iced up). The downside was that it was TINY - a fraction of the size that would be acceptable these days.

[treetrunk @ Sep 27th 2008 2:33PM]

This is different to an absorption refrigerator. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator

[Aaron @ Sep 27th 2008 1:24PM]

What's sad is I had never heard of this before, but it totally sounds like something that we should be implementing more of, or at least looking into the effectiveness of such a process.

[Yrblz @ Sep 27th 2008 1:42PM]

The only new thing here is the use of different gases. Servel and later Electrolux make absorption refrigerators that are indeed widely used - for example, many hotel mini-bars use them since they're silent. I own a Servel absorption refrigerator that can run on either propane or electricity. It isn't very efficient but it is extremely handy when the power goes out - as it does here for a few days at a time.

[treetrunk @ Sep 27th 2008 2:32PM]

Actually, this is not an absorption refrigerator, but an Einstein refrigerator, a similar but nevertheless different design. Electrolux bought up the patents to protect their own technology from the competition, but to the best of my knowledge it was never developed further or commercialised.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator

[Bill @ Sep 27th 2008 1:45PM]

It really is sad the number of absolutely ingenious inventions and ideas, that were efficient and 'green' that were simple junked all because they were a 'hassle' and energy was so so damn cheap.

Passive solar, Masonry (also called Finnish, or Russian) stoves, Luxfer Prisms, Solar hot water...

...what we need in this country is a 'floor' set under the price of oil, say around 150 bucks per barrel; should the price of oil drop below this, a tax kicks in and automatically raises the price to 150...we keep the revenue, demand declines, alternative energy becomes competitive, less money goes to garbage regimes like the Saudis, Iran, and Russia....

...and we get off our National Heroin, cheap oil. America today is a nation of Junkies, and drugs are cheap oil (energy), cheap credit, and an infantile consumer culture where families consisting of two people buy 4000 sq. foot houses, and drive 4000 pound SUVs - yea, I know a few like that personally.

[happy_penguin @ Sep 27th 2008 5:43PM]

"what we need in this country is a 'floor' set under the price of oil, say around 150 bucks per barrel; should the price of oil drop below this, a tax kicks in and automatically raises the price to 150...we keep the revenue, demand declines, alternative energy becomes competitive"

Uh.... no. The last thing Washington needs is more tax. They prove time and time again that they can not be trusted with our tax dollars. Fuck that. No how, no way.

[rcappo @ Sep 27th 2008 7:22PM]

I agree with you. The tax would push people to other technologies that could be subsidized to make them even more attractive to switch to. Then they wouldn't have to pay the gas tax anymore, and be sponsoring the foreign countries that don't like us. And anything that increases our renewable, clean power generation and use would be good for years to come.

The government is going to spend the money whether they have it or not. But we elect the people that provide the oversight of this money. It's just that in the past 28 years we elected people who wanted to give more money to their rich friends, and didn't care about the national debt.

[chris @ Sep 27th 2008 2:51PM]

This technology was sold in europe switzerland by the appliance brand Sibir until 1990.
I dont know what the hype about this is?! Its not new, its been avalible. Its by fare not as energy efficient as compressed r134.
Many of these fridges blew up. If the ammonia/CO2/butane mix overheats it goes boooom. You can also find it in many 3rd world countries.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK BEFORE FALLING FOR THE HYPE.

[Leo Qin @ Sep 27th 2008 3:33PM]

They're not gonna use the same gasses. We know what happens when you mix stuff like that, and technologies come far enough that we have non-volatile substitutes

[treetrunk @ Sep 27th 2008 4:13PM]

DO YOUR OWN HOMEWORK. From the article:

"But McCulloch thinks that by tweaking the design and replacing the types of gases used it will be possible to quadruple the efficiency."

That one sentence deals with all the "problems" you point out. They intend to replace the gases, and they intend to improve the efficiency; that's the whole point of the research.

[Kapara @ Sep 27th 2008 9:12PM]

You could probably use mirrors to focus the heat (solar) to generate the heat. I wonder if the more heat you apply the colder it will get? Then you would not need gas. At least during the day when it is hot outside or there is enough sunlight.

[Bill @ Sep 27th 2008 9:21PM]

How efficient compared to an electric compressor, though?

A modern (with the extra insulation) 20 cu.ft. top-freezer fridge costs only about $40/year.

[Jon Doe. @ Sep 27th 2008 11:18PM]

The dude is dead and he's still giving us new ideas. DAMN....

[mocax @ Sep 27th 2008 11:50PM]

Why don't they invent a interspatial gate that opens directly into an arctic iceblock?

All it takes is a little extra-dimensional dark energy to power the gate.

Of course, there's a 0.05% chance of facing an Ork when you open your fridge.

[frankXchange @ Sep 28th 2008 12:46AM]

Um, I have a link to similar concept below, but it was NOT invented by Einstein, but was invented in 1858. (Seriously, Albert Einstein designed fridges?) The original concept used water and ammonia. It was extremely dangerous because of the high pressures and toxic fumes required.

Adam Grosser got the thermodynamics unit at Stanford to analyse the concept and discovered that the standard refrigeration tables were wrong. With a design team from the UK, he built one using low pressure, non-toxic coolants. The design concept is really neat too. You heat up the 8 lb refrigeration unit for 1/2 hour - on top of a fire for instance, - let it cool for an hour, then insert it into a large 3 gallon storage drum. It will keep the drum at just above freezing for 24 hours.

To hear Adam Grosser explain it, go to:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/adam_grosser_and_his_sustainable_fridge.html

[treetrunk @ Sep 28th 2008 5:23AM]

Again, that appears to be a standard absorption refrigerator, not an Einstein refrigerator - it's a different refrigeration cycle. What you linked to actually sounds very similar to a modern-day more compact version of a 1920's "Icy ball":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icy_Ball

Much like Grosser's device, it's intermittent - you heat it up in the morning, it cools all day.

This research is looking at a different type of refrigeration cycle, which nobody seems to have developed further. Also, the mention of solar for heating implies they're looking at developing a more continuous device, which doesn't require daily user intervention.

[Steve Jobless @ Sep 28th 2008 9:02AM]

Old technology ... all you young people should go read all about it. Bee around for more than 70 years. Works well in remote conditions. Could save a lot of eco-brownie-points.

[goolier @ Sep 28th 2008 2:28PM]

sure it might keep thing cool... but will it turn the Rockies blue?

[Jay @ Sep 29th 2008 11:24AM]

Geeze... what's all the fuss?? I've had an evaporative refridgerator in my RV for years!!!!!. As a matter of fact almost every RV out there has an evaporative refridgerator very similar to this design. The only difference is that it uses propane to heat the liquid instead of magnetic fields and such. They even make evaporative fridges that work off 12v deep cycle batteries. It's only now that the focus is on "green" technologies that someone decides to refine an already existing product for use in the home. I'm soo sick of hearing about "green" technology that's been around for years but now is the greatest thing since sliced butter.