The magnetic refrigeration is a couple of years old concept . Used in cryogenics and astronautics, the magnetic refrigeration was waiting for its D-day to enter also the household refrigerators market. As far as I know, the D-day still has not come…

What´s gadolinium and how the magnetic refrigerator will work (if it will work)

Gadolinium may be a substance you have never heard of before. Anyway, it is there sitting on the 64th place in the Mendeleev´s periodic table of elements.
It is often used as an intravenous contrast agent to improve the images obtained by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (products like MultiHance, Omniscan, Gadovist contain gadolinium).

When Gadolinium is put into a magnetic field, it heats up (the so called positive magnetocaloric effect). When demagnetised, it cools down (negative magnetocaloric effect). And that is the whole secret of magnetic refrigerators.

Magnetic refrigerators save energy

Such gadolinium-based magnetic refrigerator would loose almost no energy during the cooling cycle. This is it´s main advantage compared to standard vapor-cycle compressor refrigerators where the energy loss is huge during compression and expansion of the cooling agent. Therefore magnetic refrigerators are expected to consume up to 50% less power than the standard fridges.