Experimental investigation of a composite phase change material: Thermal-energy storage and release

Abstract

In recent times, composites made out of polymers and paraffin waxes were thought to be good thermal energy storage materials, in which the heat is stored as latent heat of fusion in the paraffin wax. In this study, phase change composite material with spherical shape calibrated based paraffin wax (RT27) was produced. The properties of the prepared composite phase change material have been characterized. The objective of this article was to study the energy storage and the energy recovery by using a phase change composite material. An experimental set-up consisting of fluxmetric measurement has been constructed to provide the thermal performance of the composite. In addition, a differential scanning calorimetry analysis was carried out. The experimental apparatus allows providing heat storage capacities and “apparent” thermal conductivities of the composite at the solid and liquid states, and also a measurement of the latent heat of fusion. The proposed test provides temperature and heat flux measurements at the material borders. The amount of energy exchanged during the variation of the thermodynamic state samples could be calculated when the boundary temperatures vary. In this article, one shows how it can allow the study of complex composite material with PCM. In particular, heat flux measurements make it possible to highlight very specific behaviors of these products and are thus a very interesting experimental source of data which comes to complete the traditional measurement methods like calorimetric device (differential scanning calorimetry).

Recently emerging trends in thermal conductivity of polymer nanocomposites

“…PCMs are efficient and useful in thermal management applications due to their high storage density and the small temperature differential between stored and released heat (Krupa et al 2014). Paraffin wax has numerous uses, although versatility in application is limited because of low thermal conductivity (Trigui et al 2014). …”

“…Carbon derivatives exhibiting porosity have an interconnected open-cell structure with graphitic linkages of high heat dissipation (Lafdi et al 2008). Therefore, numerous investigations have studied the influence of graphite in heat dissipation of PCMs (Trigui et al 2014). Therefore, recently, PNCs filled with EG have demonstrated remarkable improvement of the mechanical and thermophysical properties of PCMs, including the electrical and thermal conductivities.…”

Multifunctional glass fiber/polyamide composites with thermal energy storage/release capability

“…PCMs can accumulate a large amount of thermal energy per unit mass, at a nearly constant temperature, with a low change in volume [9]. Organic PCMs, and paraffin waxes in particular, are the most widely used materials for TES applications [1,10,11]. They present considerable advantages over other PCMs, such as high energy density, small volume change over phase transition, narrow working temperature range, tunable operating temperature, low density and cheapness [12,13].…”

A new experimental device and inverse method to characterize thermal properties of composite phase change materials

“…On their side, Franquet et al [8] characterizes thermophysical properties of a cement mortar containing a phase change material. Recently PCM composite characterization was performed by Karkri et al [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] using two different experimental techniques: thermal energy storage properties, such as latent heat and heat capacities, were investigated using a Transient Guarded Hot Plate Technique (TGHPT), whereas thermal conductivities and diffusivities were measured using a periodic temperature method.…”