Eur. Phys. J. B (2017) 90: 78
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2017-70730-7

Regular Article

Theoretical and numerical analysis of a heat pump model utilizing Dufour effect

Division of Physics, Hokkaido University, 060-0810 Sapporo, Japan

^a e-mail: hos@statphys.sci.hokudai.ac.jp

Received: 11 December 2016
Received in final form: 12 March 2017
Published online: 26 April 2017

Abstract

A heat pump model utilizing the Dufour effect is proposed, and studied by numerical and theoretical analysis. Numerically, we perform MD simulations of this system and measure the cooling power and the coefficient of performance (COP) as figures of merit. Theoretically, we calculate the cooling power and the COP from the phenomenological equations describing this system by using the linear irreversible thermodynamics and compare the theoretical results with the MD results.