Applications of Nanocomposite-Enhanced Phase-Change Materials for Heat Storage

Abstract

The development of efficient materials for heat storage has become recently a popular research topic as amount of energy gained from solar power depends significantly on day and night cycle. That's why the right choice of material for heat storage directly affects the utilization efficiency of solar thermal energy. Research on heat storage materials nowadays focuses on phase change materials (PCMs) enabling repeatedly utilize the latent heat of the phase transition between the solid and liquid phase. Most currently used PCMs have low thermal conductivity, which prevents them from overcoming problem of rapid load changes in the charging and discharging processes. To overcome this obstacle and to obtain excellent heat storage possibility, various techniques have been proposed for enhancing the thermal conductivity of PCMs, such as adding metallic or nonmetallic particles, in-corporating of porous or expanded materials, fibrous materials, macro-, micro-, or nanocapsules, etc.The authors of this study report particularly the huge potential of oxide nanoadditives, such as titania (TiO2), alumina (Al2O3), silica (SiO2) and zinc oxide (ZnO), that are even in small quantities (up to 3 wt.%) able significantly to enhance the heat storage characteristics of conventional PCMs. Moreover, the microstructure of the granules produced by recycling of aluminum scrap refers to the possibility of their utilizing for the purpose of low cost solutions enabling to increase the thermal conductivity of PCMs. The above mentioned technical solutions are therefore the important keys to successful commercialization of materials for latent heat storage in future building industry.