An appliance Americans have been using for generations may not be as efficient as it could be.

The Ames Laboratory is currently working on a way to remedy the efficiency problem plaguing refrigerators by finding a better way to cool them.

The team currently working on this project is looking to find a material that, when acted upon by magnetic forces, can generate cooling.

This is an effect called the “caloric effect,” which is where the team got the name of its project: CaloriCool.

The team proposed the plan to the Department of Energy and was approved to start developing the material and system to create a refrigerator that is efficient and will not break the bank. Work will begin July 1.

“After we developed the initial material … it turned out to be a lot harder [than we originally thought],” said Duane Johnson, chief research officer for the Ames Laboratory and professor at Iowa State. “Over 20 years, they’ve gotten closer and better and more efficient. But it’s not quite efficient and cheap enough to be able to sell to you.”

The technology of a refrigerator hasn’t changed in more than 100 years, according to an Ames Laboratory press release. The only thing that has changed is the type of coolant gas that is found within the tubes, which have become more environmentally friendly over the years.

Current refrigerators are inefficient because of the heat they produce.

“The coolant is taking the heat out of the refrigerator and it’s dumping it in [the room],” Johnson said. “It may raise the temperature of your room a degree.”

The Ames Laboratory team wants to reduce how much energy is needed to make a refrigerator cool enough to store perishable foods, without the hot motors or tubes full of coolant in the back of a refrigerator.

“We’re going to replace a mechanical device with electronic effects, which is extremely efficient,” said Vitalij Pecharsky, distinguished professor of materials science and engineering and a researcher for Ames Laboratory. “It’s almost 100 percent efficient.”

Pecharsky and Johnson said they are looking to develop different materials that work for not only a refrigerator but also a freezer and an air conditioner.

“If you’ve ever been on a plane, and you look on the roof, most of the stuff on the roof are air conditioners,” Johnson said. “[Also] if you go on a government military bases, there is air-conditioning in every one of those offices. It’s very inefficient.”

The idea is not a new way to cool refrigerators, Johnson said. The idea of magnetic cooling goes back as early as 1926, but the Ames Laboratory has been talking about it and running tests for about 20 years.

Since then, Pecharsky discovered a material that created a large caloric effect where the change in temperature was large, which he coined the “Giant Caloric Effect.” This discovery proves promising to the upcoming work they will be conducting.

The Ames Laboratory has been a DOE Lab since World War II and has helped with the science behind the Manhattan Project and lead-free solder. It hopes to be the first lab to propose an efficient and cheap change to how refrigerators are built and used.