A matter of performance & criticality: a review of rare-earth-based magnetocaloric intermetallic compounds for hydrogen liquefaction

TL;DR

This review discusses the potential of magnetocaloric intermetallic compounds for hydrogen liquefaction, focusing on balancing high performance with resource criticality of rare-earth elements.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of different rare-earth-based magnetocaloric materials and explores strategies to optimize performance while reducing resource criticality.

Findings

Heavy rare-earth compounds show excellent performance but are resource-critical.

Light and mixed rare-earth compounds offer alternatives with trade-offs in performance.

Temperature influences magnetocaloric performance significantly.

Abstract

The low efficiency of conventional liquefaction technologies based on the Joule-Thomson expansion makes liquid hydrogen currently not attractive enough for large-scale energy-related technologies that are important for the transition to a carbon-neutral society. Magnetocaloric hydrogen liquefaction has great potential to achieve higher efficiency and is therefore a crucial enabler for affordable liquid hydrogen. Cost-effective magnetocaloric materials with large magnetic entropy and adiabatic temperature changes in the temperature range of 77 $\sim$ 20 K under commercially practicable magnetic fields are the foundation for the success of magnetocaloric hydrogen liquefaction. Heavy rare-earth-based magnetocaloric intermetallic compounds generally show excellent magnetocaloric performances, but the heavy rare-earth elements (Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, and Tm) are highly critical in resources. Yttrium and light rare-earth elements (La, Ce, Pr, and Nd) are relatively abundant, but their alloys generally show less excellent magnetocaloric properties. A dilemma appears: higher performance or lower criticality? In this review, we study how cryogenic temperature influences magnetocaloric performance by first reviewing heavy rare-earth-based intermetallic compounds. Next, we look at light rare-earth-based, "mixed" rare-earth-based, and Gd-based intermetallic compounds with the nature of the phase transition order taken into consideration, and summarize ways to resolve the dilemma.