In January in Las Vegas at CES 2025, Samsung Electronics intends to present new refrigerators with hybrid cooling technology controlled by artificial intelligence. An additional cooling element for the new products will be a Peltier element, which, due to its electrical nature, organically fits into one circuit with AI control.
Image source: Samsung
This is not just marketing. Samsung determined that artificial intelligence, sensitive to the dynamics of temperature changes in refrigeration chambers, will increase the freshness of pork by 1.4 times, and salmon by 1.2 times. The company does not specify whether it will be possible to communicate with the refrigerator and discuss recipes from available products, and whether there is a chance to agree with it to receive products at night, when eating is, in general, not recommended. Perhaps these options will appear later as the product develops.
Seriously, the algorithm will try to understand the dynamics of temperature changes in the chambers and respond accordingly to threats. For example, when loading a large volume of fresh food at room temperature, the air in the chambers will definitely heat up faster. In this case, the algorithm will involve Peltier elements as a solution for quickly compensating for changes. A similar AI reaction can also be expected in the summer.
Peltier elements—thermoelectric converters that transfer heat from one end of the element to the other by electrical current—will operate in parallel with a conventional refrigeration compressor. This may temporarily increase the energy consumption of the refrigerator, Samsung warns, but the food will stay fresh longer. It’s like using a hybrid electric car, Samsung explains. When necessary, two cooling sources should be used instead of one.
The compressor, by the way, has also undergone changes. The radius of rotation for its rotating components was increased, which increased inertia by 4.1 times due to the flywheel effect and made the device more energy efficient. The new compressor runs longer than the previous one (Samsung F3) with less energy consumption. The operation of the compressor is also controlled by artificial intelligence, including the speeds at which it operates.
Finally, thanks to the use of compact Peltier elements for cooling, it was possible to increase the internal working volume of the refrigerator. Now it can accommodate 13.8% more products in the area of the two top shelves than before without increasing the external dimensions of the refrigerator. The company expects that the new models will be recognized as the most energy efficient in the coming year.