Key Inventions
Linde's first refrigeration system used Dimethyl ether as the refrigerant and was built by Maschinenfabrik Augsburg (now MAN AG) for the Spaten Brewery in 1873. He quickly moved on to develop more reliable ammonia-based cycles. These were early examples of vapor-compression refrigeration machines, and ammonia is still in wide use as a refrigerant in industrial applications.
His apparatus for the liquefaction of air combined the cooling effect achieved by allowing a compressed gas to expand (the Joule-Thomson effect first observed by James Prescott Joule and Lord Kelvin) with a counter-current heat exchange technique that used the cold air produced by expansion to chill ambient air entering the apparatus. Over a period of time this effect gradually cooled the apparatus and air within it to the point of liquefaction.
Linde followed development of air liquefaction equipment with equipment that also separated air into its constituent parts using distillation processes.
Linde's inventions and developments spurred development in many areas of cryogenics, physics, chemistry and engineering.
Read more about this topic: Carl Von Linde
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