Abstract
The current energy crisis has prompted the development and utilization of renewable energy and energy storage material. In this study, levulinic acid (LA) and 1,4-butanediol (BDO) were used to synthesize a novel levulinic acid 1,4-butanediol ester (LBE) by both enzymatic and chemical methods. The enzymatic method exhibited excellent performance during the synthesis process, and resulted in 87.33% of LBE yield, while the chemical method caused more by-products and higher energy consumption. What’s more, the thermal properties of the obtained LBE as a phase change material (PCM) were evaluated. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) showed that the melting temperature, latent heat of melting, and pyrolysis temperature were 50.51 °C, 156.1 J/g, and 150–160 °C, respectively. Compared with the traditional paraffin, the prepared PCM has a superior phase transition temperature, a higher latent heat of melting, and better thermal stability. The thermal conductivity could be increased to 0.34 W/m/k after adding expanded graphite (EG). In summary, LBE has great potential in the application of energy storage as a low-temperature phase change energy storage material.Graphical
Highlights
With the rapid consumption of traditional fossil fuels, the Earth received approximately 122,000 TW (70%) of the solar radiation into the upper atmosphere (174,000 TW) (Paul et al 2021)
Comparison of chemical and enzymatic synthesis of LBE Esterification of levulinic acid (LA) and BDO by the enzymatic and chemical methods was compared under the optimal conditions
The results showed that the melting temperature and enthalpy of LBE were similar to that of paraffin, which indicated that LBE is a promising alternative in replacing paraffin
Summary
With the rapid consumption of traditional fossil fuels, the Earth received approximately 122,000 TW (70%) of the solar radiation into the upper atmosphere (174,000 TW) (Paul et al 2021). As a typical energy storage material, phase change materials have received much attention from researchers and industrial enterprises in recent years Because they can absorb or release a lot of latent heat at their melting point to trigger the increase or decrease of the temperature in the surrounding area (Zhang et al 2016, 2018; Kant et al 2016; Wang et al 2018), Paraffin is a significant thermal energy storage (TES) material (Zhao et al 2021). It has been used as the basic raw material to synthesize composite phase change materials in the temperature range between low temperature and medium temperature. Most current studies focus on the development of renewable phase change energy storage materials with high latent heat and thermal conductivity
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