“Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.”

~Theodore Levitt

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are working on a new method of heating and cooling. The technique, which they have named ionocaloric cooling takes advantage of how heat energy is stored or released when a material changes phase. The ionocaloric cycle causes this phase and temperature change through the flow of ions (electrically charged atoms or molecules) which come from a salt. Drew Lilley, a graduate research assistant at the Berkeley Lab and Ph.D. candidate at UC Berkeley believes that ionocaloric cooling would provide a “..method that makes stuff cold, works efficiently, is safe, and doesn’t hurt the environment.” To read more, link here!