Experimental Investigation of Freezing and Melting Characteristics Of Graphene Based Phase Change Nanocomposite for Cold Thermal Energy Storage Applications

Abstract

In the present work freezing and melting characteristics of water seeded with chemically functionalized graphene nano-platelets in a vertical cylindrical capsule was experimentally studied. The volume percentage of functionalized graphene nano-platelets was varied from 0.1% to 0.5% with an interval of 0.1%. The stability of the synthesised samples were carried out by zeta potential distribution. The thermal conductivity of the nanocomposite samples were experimentally measured using transient hot wire method. A maximum enhancement of ~24% in the thermal conductivity was observed for the 0.5% volume percentage in the liquid state while a ~53% enhancement in the solid state. Freezing and melting behaviour of water dispersed with graphene nanoplatelets were carried out using a cylindrical stainless steel capsule in a constant temperature bath. The bath temperatures considered for studying freezing characteristics were considered to be −6 °C and −10 °C, while to study the melting characteristics the bath temperature was set as 31 °C and 36 °C. The freezing and melting time decreased for all the test conditions when the volume percentage of GnP increased.  The freezing rate was enhanced by ~ 43% and ~32% for the bath temperatures of −6 °C and −10 °C respectively at 0.5 vol % of graphene loading. The melting rate was enhanced by ~42% and ~63% for the bath temperature of 31 °C and 36 °C respectively at 0.5 vol % of graphene loading.

Effect of Different Inlet/Outlet Port Configurations on the Thermal Management of Prismatic Li-Ion Batteries

“…Various thermal management techniques, such as air-cooling [10], liquid cooling [11][12][13][14][15][16], heat pipes [17][18][19][20] and phase change materials (PCMs) [21][22][23][24][25], have been studied in the last decade to dissipate the heat generation from the Li-ion battery packs. It is found that the liquid cooling techniques are very effective to restrict the maximum temperature rise (Tmax) and temperature difference among battery cells (ΔTmax) in the desirable range; however, it increases the complexity, weight, and cost of the cooling system.…”