> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # In Darmstadt, a fridge keeps its cool with a magnet and a tank of water - URL: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/magnotherm-cooling/ - Published: 2026-11-03T06:58:18.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-03T07:00:21.000Z - Description: Nearly every fridge on Earth works by squeezing a gas. A startup in Darmstadt has built one that works by sliding a metal in and out of a magnet, with nothing but water in the pipes, and it is already cooling drinks in German supermarkets. - Author: Nicole McMahon - Tags: Innovations, Global Good News, All stories Here is a small piece of physics most of us never meet. Certain metal alloys warm up when placed in a magnetic field and cool again when taken out. Run that cycle over and over, carry the heat away with water, and you have a refrigerator with no refrigerant gas at all. That is what Magnotherm does. It grew out of research at the Technical University of Darmstadt that began in 2002 and became a company in 2019 under Timur Sirman, who leads it, and his cofounder Maximilian Fries. Its working material is an alloy of lanthanum, iron and silicon, and its magnet is the ordinary neodymium kind with no heavy rare earths. Water is the only thing in the pipes, at the pressure of the air around you, so the machine is quiet, cannot leak anything flammable, and has no high pressure parts to tire. Its first cooler went to Coca Cola in early 2023; its second, Eclipse, is a plug in drinks cooler of about one kilowatt, and the company of thirty people has now sold fifty worldwide. In October, DW went to Darmstadt to film it. ![Drinks coolers in a corner shop: the kind of cabinet Magnotherm's Eclipse replaces.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0d/06/0d067be9-327f-4730-b9c3-5f0cdd2bc6fa/content/images/2026/11/magnotherm-cooling-inside.jpg) Drinks coolers in a corner shop: the kind of cabinet Magnotherm's Eclipse replaces. Photograph: Drinks coolers in a corner shop: the kind of cabinet Magnotherm's Eclipse replaces by Matti Blume, via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0. Why does it matter beyond the drinks aisle? About ninety five per cent of the world's cooling runs on compressed gases, and cooling accounts for roughly a tenth of the world's energy related carbon dioxide. In a trial with the supermarket chain REWE, now reaching up to ten stores, the Eclipse held four to five degrees using about fifteen per cent less energy than a comparable propane unit; the figure is the company's own from first tests, and it says thirty per cent is realistic as the design matures. Hauser, a maker of shop refrigeration, showed a display cabinet built around it at EuroShop in February. The honest limits: a magnetic cooler is still bigger, heavier and dearer than the gas kind, the magnet is the costliest part, and freezer temperatures are on the drawing board, not the shop floor. But a larger design using superconducting magnets is on the bench for cold stores, backed by 6.8 million euros from investors and 3.8 million from Europe's raw materials institute. A fridge that cools with a magnet and a tank of water: next time you reach for a cold drink, it may be the one. ### Sources and links Our short take: from EIT RawMaterials' success story on Magnotherm (9 June 2026), Cooling Post's report on the Hauser Renimag cabinet (6 April 2026) and DW's video feature from Darmstadt (October 2026). Photographs: as credited in captions. - [EIT RawMaterials, Magnotherm's magnetic cooling is transforming the refrigeration industry](https://eitrawmaterials.eu/newsroom/success-stories/magnotherms-magnetic-cooling-transforming-refrigeration-industry) The alloy and the magnet, Polaris and Eclipse, the REWE trial and its 15 per cent, fifty units, funding, the 95 per cent and one tenth figures. - [Cooling Post, Hauser debuts magnetocaloric cabinet](https://www.coolingpost.com/world-news/hauser-debuts-magnetocaloric-cabinet/) Water at one bar, the one kilowatt capacity, the limits (size, weight, cost), the scaling plans and the 30 per cent hope. - [DW, A startup in Darmstadt is rethinking cooling systems with magnets](https://www.dw.com/en/a-startup-in-darmstadt-is-rethinking-cooling-systems-with-magnets/video-79591997) The October 2026 video. - [Magnotherm](https://www.magnotherm.com/) Polaris, Eclipse and Stellar.