Exclusive: Barocal can cool your food and drink by squeezing a hunk of plastic crys...

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 Moya, the startup’s founder. “I’ve always been very interested in technologies for heating and cooling,” he told TechCrunch. He traces it back to his youth in Spain, where he would spend hours studying in a small, hot room. “I really remember when air conditioning came to the house — it was like wow!” he recalled. As a professor of materials physics at the University of Cambridge, he focused on refrigerants of all kinds, though he became particularly fascinated by solid materials could capture and