On the way to a green household: effective cooling and heating solutions

Cooling food, washing and drying laundry, cleaning dishes in the dishwasher - in all these scenarios, household appliances are used that we can no longer imagine doing without. However, cooling air or heating water requires a lot of energy. In the new FFG and SFG funded ECHODA project - Energy Efficient Cooling and Heating of Domestic Appliances - our Institute of Materials Science and Testing, together with Graz University of Technology as a scientific partner and numerous industrial partners, is looking for ways to make household appliances more efficient.

It is impossible to imagine our kitchens and bathrooms without them: refrigerators and freezers, washing machines and dryers, dishwashers and water heaters. However, they consume a lot of electricity when working and therefore not only put a strain on the end user's wallet, but also have a negative impact on our ecological footprint. There are many things that could be done to improve the carbon footprint of household appliances with cooling and heating requirements, to use the technical term. The ECHODA project focuses, for example, on the use of optimized cooling and heating circuits with sensors that can automatically adapt their performance to the ambient conditions, or on the substitution of classic heating elements with significantly more efficient heat pumps. The efficiency of the revised or newly developed components and system parts will be closely scrutinized in the next step: From development and use through to disposal and recycling, the entire life cycle of the products is considered as part of a life cycle analysis LCA.

Montanuni contributes know-how on high-performance polymers

The Institute of Materials Science and Testing of Polymers at Montanuniversität Leoben conducts research at the highest level in the fields of polymer physics, materials science and the testing and application of high-performance polymers, and the team of scientists is also contributing this expertise to the ECHODA project: On the one hand, the focus is on optimizing polymer components already used in household appliances and, on the other, on developing new polymer-based composites for innovative compressor technologies. The main aim is to improve acoustic properties and thermal efficiency: improved heat management can prevent electrical energy from being wasted during operation. At the same time, polymer components open up new possibilities in terms of noise reduction and device comfort. Another focus of research will be to design and redesign existing and new components in such a way that they can be recycled to a large extent.