POLARIS x Gastro-Cool

MAGNOTHERM and Gastro-Cool are taking a technology that is over a hundred years old to the next level with the POLARIS magnetic beverage cooler.

How do you bring innovations into society? If you ask MAGNOTHERM and Gastro-Cool, the answer is: just do it – without "overthinking" everything. Thanks to this attitude, the two companies were recently able to introduce POLARIS, the world's first commercially available magnetic beverage cooler that is completely free of harmful refrigerants.

Christian Machers, Managing Director of Gastro-Cool GmbH & Co. KG, became aware of the up-and-coming start-up with the innovative cooling technology via the career network LinkedIn. On the spur of the moment, he contacted the co-founder and managing director of MAGNOTHERM, Timur Sirman. Because the entrepreneur is convinced:

"Magnetic cooling has the potential to revolutionize an industry that is over a hundred years old and make the gas compressor obsolete."

The POLARIS beverage cooler is the first step towards sustainable and energy-efficient cooling of supermarkets, buildings and the liquefaction of green hydrogen.

"We aim to produce up to 100 beverage coolers next year to bring magnetic cooling technology to supermarkets," says Timur Sirman. "We have set ourselves an ambitious goal. We are all the happier to have found such a flexible and open partner in Gastro-Cool."

While MAGNOTHERM is developing the magnetic compressor replacement, Gastro-Cool produces housings individually adapted to the technology and has the corresponding market experience. Gastro-Cool is one of the leading manufacturers of promotional refrigerators and sells them to well-known beverage manufacturers such as Coca-Cola and Heineken. Until now, gas compressors have been installed in the devices, which generate the desired temperature by means of a gas-liquid mixture (refrigerant).

The problem with conventional refrigerants, however, is that they are very harmful to the climate and cause a greenhouse effect that can be up to ten thousand times stronger than that of CO₂. Gastro-Cool switched its own production to the CFC- and HFC-free and more energy-efficient refrigerant isobutane long before the legal ban. Together with MAGNOTHERM, new, even more innovative possibilities for cooling technology are now being researched. This is because flammable agents such as isobutane or propane can still be found in all refrigerators.

"The required quantities of problematic refrigerants in small and household appliances are very low. However, if you want to use them to refrigerate an entire supermarket, they definitely become a problem," explains start-up manager Timur Sirman. Furthermore, MAGNOTHERM, which was founded in 2019 as a spin-off from the Technical University of Darmstadt, is striving in the long term to install its magnetic cooling technology in air conditioning systems, as the demand for these will increase enormously – not only because of global warming.

In addition to the POLARIS beverage cooler, MAGNOTHERM already sells two scientific devices: the MS30 for demonstrating the magnetocaloric effect and the MS90, a measuring device for optimizing magnetocaloric materials. In addition to applications at room temperature, the technology can also be used at ultra-low temperatures to liquefy hydrogen at -253°C and to transport and store it energy-efficiently at high energy density.

Magnetic cooling technology uses magnetocaloric materials that react to changes in magnetic fields in a temperature-active manner, as well as water instead of climate-damaging or problematic coolants. This allows devices to be built that are up to 40 percent more efficient than a conventional gas compressor.