Investigation on thermal properties enhancement of lauryl alcohol with multi-walled carbon nanotubes as phase change material for thermal energy storage

Abstract

This paper investigates the thermal properties enhancement of lauryl alcohol, which falls in the category of organic fatty alcohol as an energy storage material for latent heat thermal energy storage using multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNCTs) nanoparticle additive. Nano-enhanced PCMs of lauryl alcohol with different concentrations of MWCNTs ranging from 1 wt% to 5 wt% were prepared, and the thermophysical properties were studied using various characterization techniques. From the result, it was found that the thermal conductivity of the lauryl alcohol can be significantly increased with the addition of MWCNT. The maximum increment in thermal conductivity was observed for 5 wt% MWCNT. The chemical structure was not altered by the addition of MWCNT and Gum Arabic. However, the concentration of nanoparticles affects several other important properties such as latent heat and degree of supercooling. Therefore, the optimum concentration of the nanoparticle has to be carefully determined for better thermal properties. The detailed investigation on the nano-enhanced lauryl showed that the lauryl alcohol with MWCNT could be a potential PCM for cold thermal storage applications.