Experimental investigations on thermal conductivity and thermal stability of the PCM using Nano-MgO

Abstract

The currentwork studies the modification of thermal conductivity (TC)and thermal stability (TS) of the technical classparaffin-based phase changing substance (P-PCM)after introducing varying mass fraction of magnesium oxide nanoparticles (nano-MgO) within their matrix for augmenting thermal storage capabilities. The nano-modified paraffin PCM (NMP-PCM) paraffin has been created using four distinct fractions of nano-MgO namely, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1.0%,respectively. The crystallite size of the commercially procured nano-MgO had beenconfirmed using a Mastersizer 3000 particle size analyzer. Thermal stability NMP-PCM samples had been evaluated with the deployment of TGA801 thermogravimetric analyzer from Leco. And the most importantly,theTC of the NMP-PCM samples had been assessed using TEMPOS thermal analyzing instrument. The study demonstrated that the homogeneousdistribution of the nano-MgO particles within the NMP-PCMconsiderably increased the thermal conducting capacity as well as thermal stability of P-PCM. Furthermore, the enhancement in TCseems to be unpredictivewith regard to the rise inproportion of nano-MgOparticles. The PCM withup to 0.75 % of nano-MgOparticles discovered to demonstrate the great enhancement in TC as well as TS compared with 1.0% of nano-MgOin the P-PCM matrix. Afterwards, the augmentation in TC was not significant. The blending of 1.0 % of nano-MgO in P-PCM upsurged the thermal conductivity by 55.5%, which was the maximum enhancement reported during the investigation.