Greenhouse gas emissions from current refrigeration and heat pumping technology are on track to contribute 0.5 degrees of global warming by 2100. Calion’s non-hazardous and zero-global-warming potential ionocaloric technology decarbonizes refrigeration, air conditioning, and heat pumping while cutting costs through efficiency gains, expanded operating temperature ranges, and energy load-shifting.
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Drew Lilley
Drew Lilley is the founder and CEO of Calion Technologies. He is working to commercialize his doctoral research on ionocaloric heating and cooling for next-generation, zero-global-warming-potential refrigeration, and heat pumping technologies. Lilley is a thermal scientist with core expertise in thermal transport and thermodynamics. He earned his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from UC Berkeley in 2023.
TECHNOLOGY
Critical Need
Vapor-compression technology using hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) has dominated refrigeration and heat pumping for the past century. It is predicted that by 2050, HFC emissions will account for up to 20 percent of equivalent global CO₂ emissions due to rapid growing demand for refrigeration and electrification of heating in the world. Through the international Kigali Amendment, countries have committed to curbing HFC use by midcentury, but the heating and cooling industries have not yet adopted an acceptable replacement.
Technology Vision
Calion’s ionocaloric heat pumping technology can provide a drop-in replacement for vapor compression technologies and provides a completely new method or platform by which technologies can heat and cool across all industries. Ionocaloric heating and cooling is a solid-liquid based heat pumping and cooling technology and it works by changing the concentration of a salt in a mixture. To cool, a salt is added to the mixture. To heat, a salt is removed from the mixture. By combining both processes, Calion enables heat pump or refrigeration technology that does not emit dangerous greenhouse gases.
Potential for Impact
Because they do not release potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, or use toxic or flammable components, ionocaloric technologies can break the perilous environmental quagmire vapor compression technology cannot seem to escape.
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Calion Technologies