Barocal can cool food and drinks by squeezing blocks of plastic crystals

Today’s refrigerators operate on the same basic technology as they did over 100 years ago. You’d think by now I could have come up with something better.

And we did, but nothing has been able to dethrone the cheap and reliable vapor compression, the process that keeps milk cold today. One startup wants to change that.

Barocal has developed a completely new heating and cooling method using only inexpensive solid materials. Early prototypes are already as efficient as existing refrigerator compressors, and the technology is expected to significantly reduce energy consumption. Oh, and there’s no risk of leaking climate-warming gases, the bane of vapor compression.

To prepare the technology for market, Barocal has raised $10 million in a seed round, the startup exclusively told TechCrunch. Investors in this round include World Fund, Breakthrough Energy Discovery, Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, and IP Group.

Barocal’s core technology comes from research conducted by the startup’s founder, Xavier Moya. “I’ve always been very interested in heating and cooling technology,” he told TechCrunch. He goes back to his youth in Spain, where he would study for hours in a small, hot room. “I remember when air conditioning came to my house, and I thought it was amazing,” he recalled.

As professor of materials physics at the University of Cambridge, he focused on all kinds of refrigerants, but was particularly fascinated by solid materials that could capture and release heat simply by squeezing or stretching. One of his favorite demonstrations involves asking people to take a deflated balloon, hold it to their mouth, and stretch and loosen it repeatedly.

“When you stretch it, it gets hot. And when you wait and let go, it feels cold,” he said.

The same principle applies to the material class developed by Barocal. This relates to organic materials that are widely used in a variety of industries, from plastics to paints. Normally, molecules within a substance are free to rotate. However, when compressed, the molecules stop rotating. Heat, at its most basic level, is the movement of atoms and molecules, so reducing that movement causes the material to release heat. When the pressure is removed, the material absorbs heat.

Barocal uses these materials to transfer heat. For example, in a refrigerator, this material transfers heat from inside the refrigerator to the outside, lowering the temperature of the food inside. To transfer heat, the company runs water through the material and into the radiator.

Since the material is solid, there is no problem with gas leakage. In conventional refrigerators, the gaseous refrigerant later decomposes ozone or warms the climate, depending on the type. Greenhouse gas-based refrigerants are of particular concern because they can warm the climate 1,000 times more than the same amount of carbon dioxide.

Barocal’s technology works at any scale, but the company is first exploring large-scale HVAC and refrigerators. These systems allow startups to increase their efficiency and have the potential to have a noticeable impact on their customers’ bottom lines. “We’re looking at larger commercial systems where we think we can have a bigger impact sooner,” Moya said.