Refrigerator update

• The average size of refrigerators in U.S. households increased by 10 percent between 1972 and 2001, and the number per home rose as well.
  
• More than 65 percent of Chinese city-dwellers now own a refrigerator, and more than 90 percent own a clothes washer—both up from less than 5 percent only two decades ago.
  
• In India, sales of frost-free refrigerators are projected to grow nearly 14 percent annually.
  
• In 1978, 56 percent of American homes had cooling systems, most of which were small window units; 20 years later, three quarters of U.S. homes had air conditioners, and nearly half were large central systems.
  
• Standby power—the electricity consumed when appliances are turned “off” but not unplugged—could account for as much as 10 percent of total electricity use in industrial countries by 2020.
  
• This will require almost 400 additional 500-megawatt power plants that will emit more than 600 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.

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Roland Piquepaille writes "Magnetic refrigerators offer significant advantages when compared with current vapor-compression ones, such as gains in energy efficiency, lower cost of operation or elimination of environmentally damaging coolants. Unfortunately, all the materials which have been tested in the last fifty years suffer from hysteresis losses, lowering the energy available for cooling. But now, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers have found a solution, reported in Nanomaterial Yields Cool Results. By adding a small amount of iron to a gadolinium-germanium-silicon alloy, they enhanced the cooling capacity by 30 percent. This very significant step may help move the promising technology of magnetically generated refrigeration closer to market. This overview contains more details and references." [via NanoDot]