Experimental assessment of low temperature phase change materials (PCM) for refrigerating and air conditioning applications

Abstract

Refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump sector represents between 25 and 30% of the global consumption of electricity and this figure is expected to rapidly grow due to the current trend of electrification. To increase the efficiency of these systems or to maximize the use of renewable energy, latent thermal storage systems are being studied and recommended. However, there is a lack of reliable design rules based on trustable data that could help the thermal experts to design efficient and cost-effective latent thermal energy storage. This paper follows a previous work recently published (Longo et al., 2022) where the thermo-physical and transport properties of a few low temperature PCMs (i.e. 2–9 °C of melting temperature) were measured and discussed. In the present work, the attention is focused on two other fundamental aspects: the PCMs’ compatibility with the most common construction materials and their thermal behaviour during the solid/liquid phase change. The collected results will contribute to add currently unavailable data in the literature and to highlight interesting insights on the performance of the selected PCMs.