Fabrication of shape-stabilized phase change materials based on waste plastics for energy storage

Abstract

High value-added use of waste plastic has emerged an urgent research topic due to its heavy pollution to environment. Meanwhile, fluctuant characteristic of renewable energy leads to energy storage techniques to be always at the core of energy research. A protocol which could solve the pollution brought by waste plastics and making an energy storage material is highly meaningful. Herein, we found waste plastics could serve as a supporting material for the encapsulation of phase change material (PCMs), it would not only solve the leakage problem of PCMs in phase transition process, but also makes contribution to the problem of waste plastic pollution to the environment and ecology. Paraffin wax (PW) was used as a phase change material and encapsulated with porous carbon material which prepared from waste plastics through a vacuum absorption method. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analysis and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis were carried out to study the chemical composition and microstructure on this PCMs waste plastics based thermal energy material. Thermal conductivity, phase change temperature and latent heat of PCMs were tested to understand thermophysical properties of the obtained materials. Moreover, heat storage platform was installed to further know the energy storage performance of this PCMs composite made from waste plastics.