Review on solar collector systems integrated with phase‐change material thermal storage technology and their residential applications

Abstract

This article reviews the design of solar phase-change energy storage systems and their applications in residential buildings. The solar thermal collection system has high heat collection efficiency, no pollution, and it is also widely used in the field of building heating. In order to improve the efficiency of the solar collector system, the researchers found that integrating phase-change materials (PCMs) into the solar thermal collector system can achieve this goal, but there will be a problem of PCM leakage. Some researchers have solved this problem by microencapsulating PCMs, the thermal conductivity and energy storage efficiency of the PCMs after microencapsulation will be greatly affected. Adjusting the solar collector to an appropriate inclination angle can achieve the highest heat collection efficiency. Choosing the PCM in the appropriate temperature zone can improve the system efficiency. For the separated solar collector system, the parts that need to be considered include the type of heat exchanger, the structure of the energy storage heat exchanger, the shape of the heat exchanger fins, the type of solar collector, and so on. All in all, coupling PCM into the solar collector system can improve energy efficiency reduce carbon emissions and have good economics, the maximum internal rate of return of solar collectors integrated with PCMs in residential and industrial applications is 22% and 17.2%.