The effect of tapering on a magnetocaloric regenerator bed

To design a high efficiency magnetocaloric heat pump for the residential sector, we focused on the improvement of the performance of the regenerator bed. In particular, placing the regenerators circumferentially on a plane, we decided to use tapered regenerators instead of the straight channel ones. Therefore, this paper investigates the effect of the tapering of the regenerators, which exhibit better air-gap utilization. Several simulations using a 1D AMR model were run to study the performance of the tapered regenerator, and the results were compared to the case of the straight regenerator bed. Moreover, the temperature span was held fixed at 25 K, and the working temperature of the regenerator was shifted to study the sensitivity to the variation of the working conditions. This paper considers a 10-layer regenerator, with Curie temperature (TC) spacing of 2.5 K.