Exclusive: Barocal can cool your food and drink by squeezing a hunk of plastic crystals | TechCrunch

Last day to exhibit your breakthrough to 10,000+ tech leaders at Disrupt is on Oct 2. Book Exhibit Table Now. Disrupt doors open Oct. 13. Get your pass and bring someone with you at 50% off. REGISTER NOW. Refrigerators today run on the same basic technology as they did more than 100 years ago. You’d think we could have come up with something better by now. And we have, but nothing has been able to dethrone cheap, reliable vapor compression — the process that’s keeping your milk cold today. One startup hopes to change that. Barocal has developed an entirely new way of heating and cooling using nothing but an inexpensive solid material. Early prototypes are already as effective as existing refrigerator compressors, and the technology promises to use significantly less energy. Oh, and there’s no risk of leaking climate-warming gases, something that has plagued vapor compression. To prepare the technology for market, Barocal has raised a $10 million seed round, the startup exclusively told TechCrunch. Investors in the round included World Fund, Breakthrough Energy Discovery, Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, and IP Group. Barocal’s core technology stems from research performed by Xavier M