The design of phase change materials with carbon aerogel composites for multi-responsive thermal energy capture and storage

Keyan Sun,Jian Liu,Yan Kou,Quan Shi,Hongsheng Dong,Donghui Zhao,Sheng Ye

doi:10.1039/d0ta09035b

Abstract

Fe-doped carbon aerogel-based composite phase change materials exhibit the ability to respond to light, electricity, and magnetism as well as temperature for multi-responsive thermal energy capture and storage.

Highlights

Phase change materials (PCMs) with high thermal energy storage density and constant transition temperature during phase change processes have been widely applied in the thermal energy storage and temperature control elds.[1,2,3,4,5] traditional PCMs can only respond to temperature variations and directly save the generated thermal energy, which greatly limits their application in harvesting thermal energy generation by other alternations apart from temperature
Phase change materials (PCMs) have been widely used as thermal energy storage systems; traditional PCMs can only be triggered by temperature for thermal energy storage, which greatly limits their versatility in the application of capturing thermal energy
With the ability to respond to light, electricity, and magnetism as well as temperature simultaneously, the designed PCM system demonstrates excellent performance for converting solar, electric and magnetic energy into thermal energy stored as latent heat in the materials

Summary

Introduction

Phase change materials (PCMs) with high thermal energy storage density and constant transition temperature during phase change processes have been widely applied in the thermal energy storage and temperature control elds.[1,2,3,4,5] traditional PCMs can only respond to temperature variations and directly save the generated thermal energy, which greatly limits their application in harvesting thermal energy generation by other alternations apart from temperature. Macropores in the supporting matrix act as storage cavities, mesopores provide transport pathways, and micropores can serve as adsorption sites for guest species; hierarchical porous materials are suitable to form composite phase change material systems for high thermal energy storage capacity.[22,23,24] The speci c surface areas of the FCA samples increase from 228 m2 gÀ1 to 302 m2 gÀ1 with increasing ferric nitrate content in the synthesis process, corresponding with a gradual decrease in the pore sizes.

Results

Conclusion