Investigation of Vaccine Cold Storage and Transport Containers Integrated With Phase Change Material and Vacuum Insulation Panels

Thermal characterization of net-like and form-stable ML/SiO2 composite as novel PCM for cold energy storage

The phase change material is currently being regarded as an effective cooling media to be applied in the thermal management of lithium batteries-powered vehicles, in which the inorganic hydrate phase change material is desirable and widely investigated due to the high thermal conductivity, latent heat value, and low cost. However, when applied to thermal energy storage applications, supercooling and phase separation are problematic. To effectively circumvent this issue, this work considers utilizing the disodium hydrogen phosphate dodecahydrate as the matrix of the composite phase change material, as the phase transition temperature is suitable for the battery's operating temperature range. Meanwhile, the nucleating agent sodium metasilicate nonahydrate with similar lattice parameters and the thickener carboxymethyl cellulose are used to suppress the supercooling and eliminate the phase separation, respectively. Effects of nucleating agent, surface modified aluminum nitride, and short-cut carbon fiber on the supercooling degree, and thermal conductivity and curing performance in the phase change material are evaluated and discussed in detail to determine the optimal preparation scheme for Na2HPO4·12H2O/modified AlN/CF inorganic composite phase change materials. Experimental results show that the addition of 4 wt% Na2SiO3·9H2O, 4 wt% CMC, 12 wt% modified AlN, and 6 wt% CF reduces the supercooling degree of the composite phase change material to 1.9°C and increases the thermal conductivity to 1.86 W/(m·K). The composite phase change material is found to have a suitable phase change temperature (35°C), high latent heat (249 J/g), excellent shaping effect, and electrical safety performance. In addition, the composite phase change material battery module can effectively control the battery's temperature, with the maximum temperature reduced by 40.9°C at 3C discharge rate and 30°C ambient temperature compared with the natural cooling battery module. The maximum temperature difference of the composite phase change material battery module is shown to be reduced to the minimum value of 0.9°C. Highlights A novel disodium hydrogen phosphate dodecahydrate—modified aluminum nitride—carbon fiber composite phase change material is designed and prepared for battery thermal management systems. The antiwater modification scheme of AlN is proposed and assessed. The effects of AlN before and after modification on the thermal properties of CPCM are compared. The joint use of nucleating agent sodium metasilicate nonahydrate and thermal conductive filler AlN contributes to significantly inhibiting the supercooling of hydrate salt. The addition of CF can effectively increase the thermal conductivity of CPCM and prevent its leakage. CPCM has suitable phase change temperature, high thermal conductivity and latent heat value, excellent electrical safety, and stable curing performance. The battery test bench is constructed and the discharge test of the CPCM battery module is carried out. The results show that the CPCM battery module has excellent cooling performance and temperature uniformity.

Numerical study of the feasibility of coupling vacuum isolation panels with phase change material for enhanced energy-efficient buildings

Preparation and characterization of a solar-driven sodium acetate trihydrate composite phase change material with Ti4O7 particles

RT100/expand graphite composite phase change material with excellent structure stability, photo-thermal performance and good thermal reliability

Fabrication and characterization of fatty acid/wood-flour composites as novel form-stable phase change materials for thermal energy storage

Cellulose nanofiber grafting and aluminum nitride deposition on the surface of expanded graphite to improve the thermal conductivity and mechanical properties of phase change material composites

Shape-stable MXene/sodium alginate/carbon nanotubes hybrid phase change material composites for efficient solar energy conversion and storage

Phase change material (PCM) that is used in the roof top slab can minimize the heat infiltration into the living space from the building envelope and increase the indoor thermal comfort level. The major disadvantage of PCM is leakage at liquid state. Expanded graphite (EG) is used here as supporting material for PCM to prevent the leakage and maintains the form stability. The composite PCMs are prepared by adding the EG with various mass ratios, i.e. 3%, 6%, and 9%. The thermal properties of all composite PCMs are determined by DSC and thermal conductivity analyzer. The optimum PCM composition was found at 9% of EG. In this study, the shape-stabilized PCM-integrated roof top was analyzed by simplified temperature transforming (TT) numerical model. The main advantage of this model is that it is used to combine the equivalent enthalpy and heat capacity. The numerical results are validated with experimental values and show the lower mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), i.e. 6.91%. This indicates that present model is well suitable to predict the thermal performance of composite PCM incorporated roof top. The effect of various parameters like thickness of the PCM slab, wind velocity, percentage of EG mass ratio, and location of PCM are investigated by simplified TT model. The results showed that the maximum inner surface temperature reach up to 53°C for BG model (concrete and gypsum) by distributing constant heat flux, i.e. 1,000 W/m2 for 180 min. At this same condition, the inner surface temperature of other PCM models PBG (PCM, concrete, gypsum) and BPG (concreate, PCM, Gypsum) reaches to 50°C and 41°C, respectively. PBG model exhibits excellent thermal performance compared to BPG model. The thermal performance of PCM slab is also investigated by varying the thickness of the PCM layer and found that time lag is raised with the thickness of the PCM slab.

Fatty acid phase change materials(PCMs) and composite diatomite PCMs were prepared in this study, the phase change temperature of different mole ratio lauric acid(LA) and capric acid(CA) PCMs were tested by step cooling curve method, thermal physical performance of the prepared PCMs were tested by differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). A new type of lightweight phase change gypsum wallboard incorporated with LA-CA/diatomite composite PCMs was prepared, and the thermal performance of this material was studied. The results showed that the LA and CA could form an eutectic mixture. DSC results indicated that the phase change temperature of the PCMs and composite diatomite PCMs are both 26.7°C, the latent heat of the PCMs are 142.2J/g and 73.5J/g, respectively. Thermal performance test of the gypsum wallboard indicated that the temperature difference of the phase change gypsum wallboard at different moment is lower than the blank gypsum wallboard, which showed a better energy storage function of the phase change gypsum wallboard.

Thermally-induced flexible and thermally conductive enhanced phase change material with 1-hexadecanol as phase change component

The heterogeneous integration of lithium-ion batteries and power electronics in electric vehicles (EVs) application receives great attention due to its advantages of enhanced reliability, high flexibility and multifunctionality. However, the construction of the integration of batteries with power electronics presents a challenge in terms of the thermal management due to the temperature sensitivity of batteries. The heat generated by power electronics degrades the performance and life of batteries. This paper presents a numerical analysis of the heat transfer characteristics in phase change materials (PCM) composites within a system combining a battery cell with power electronics to investigate the effect of PCM composites on the heat transfer behaviour. The thermal analysis of PCM composites was conducted using a finite element model and compared with the results in literature. The findings indicate that PCM composites effectively delayed the temperature increase near the battery cell side and the power electronics side due to the large heat storage capacity of PCM. Moreover, the temperature increased more slowly when the porosity of PCM composites was higher. This study further demonstrates the effectiveness of PCM composites for thermal management applications of the integration of lithium-ion batteries and power electronics.

Form-stable paraffin/high density polyethylene composites as solid–liquid phase change material for thermal energy storage: preparation and thermal properties

Flexible engineering of advanced phase change materials

High latent heat storage and high thermal conductive phase change materials using exfoliated graphite nanoplatelets