
How Magnetic Refrigeration Works (2014) - peter_d_sherman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eYuQnqIXpY
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peter_d_sherman
There's another video, which I can't seem to find right now, where it talks
about the inventor of the Neodymium magnet creating a magnetic refrigeration
effect without using Gadolinium -- to do this, he needed to create Neodymium
magnets which were manufactured from Neodymium powder which had a smaller
particle size than for regular Neodymium magnets (something like .5 mm vs. .3
mm, or 5 microns vs. 3 microns or something like that).

The problem is (or was!), that apparently when you create Neodymium powder
that small, it catches on fire in the presence of air/oxygen!

So the apparent solution was to manufacture it in sealed machines which
contained some special gas (Nitrogen?).

Apparently this revolves around a patent dispute of some sort -- using
Gadolinium to obtain magnetic cooling was apparently patented... or so the
video said...

I don't know the full story; some or all of the above pieces of information
might be wrong, but I thought it was interesting that you could use magnetic
effects alone (with the right materials) to create cooling...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_refrigeration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_refrigeration)

I never knew that magnets (well, Neodymium and Gadolinium!) could be used for
cooling until now...

