Honeycomb-like porous copper with pleated surface for supporting phase change material with enhanced thermal conductivity and solar thermal storage performance

Abstract

Paraffin wax (PW) is concerned in the field of thermal storage because of its high thermal storage density, but it generally has problems such as low thermal conductivity, poor shape stability, and low solar absorption, which limit its application in solar thermal storage and thermal management. In this study, a honeycomb-like 3D porous Cu skeleton with a pleated surface was prepared by the salt template method, and the phase change composites (PCCs) were prepared using this 3D thermal conductive skeleton to support PW. The honeycomb-like porous structure with pleated surface has positive effects on the shape stability and solar-thermal conversion of PW. The thermal conductivity, leakage resistance, and solar-thermal conversion efficiency of the PCCs were significantly improved. Among them, the thermal conductivity of PW@PSHCPC2 reached 3.3 Wm−1 K−1, which was 16.5 times higher than that of PW, and the solar-thermal conversion efficiency reached 89.2 %, and a stable current of 61.8 mA was generated in the solar thermal power generation experiment. These results show that these PCCs have great potential for applications in several fields such as solar thermal storage, waste heat recovery, solar power generation, and electronic thermal management.