A study on cooling characteristics of clathrate compound as low temperature latent heat storage material

Abstract

Materials that can store low temperature latent heat are organic/inorganic chemicals, eutectic salt system and clathrate compound. Clathrate compound is the material that host compound in hydrogen bond forms cage and guest compound is included into it and combined. Crystallization of hydrate is generated at higher temperature than that of ice from pure water. And physical properties according to temperature are stable and congruent melting phenomenon is occurred without phase separation and it has relatively high latent heat. But clathrate compound still has supercooling problem occurred in the course of phase change and supercooling should be minimized because it affects efficiency of equipment very much. Therefore, various studies on additives to restrain this or heat storage methods are needed. Supercooling is the phenomenon that low temperature thermal storage material is not crystallized and existed as liquid for some time under phase change temperature. Because phase change into solid is delayed and it is existed as liquid due to this, heat transfer from low temperature thermal storage material is lowered. Therefore it is not crystallized at original phase change temperature and crystallized after cooled as much as supercooling degree and operation time of refrigerator is increased. In this study was investigated the cooling characteristics of the clathrate compound as a low temperature latent heat storage material. And additive was added to clathrate compound and its supercooling restrain effect was studied experimentally.