Abstract
Phase change materials have been overwhelmingly used for thermal energy storage applications. Among organics, fatty acids are an important constituent of latent heat storage. Most of the saturated fatty acid PCMs so far studied are either unary or binary constituents of pure fatty acids. In the present study, ternary blends of saturated fatty acids i.e., capric, lauric, myristic, stearic, and palmitic acids have been developed with different weight proportions. A series of 28 ternary blends viz. CA-LA-MA, CA-LA-PA, CA-LA-SA, CA-MA-PA, CA-MA-SA, and CA-PA-SA were prepared and analyzed with differential scanning calorimetry, thermal gravimetric analysis, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. DSC analysis revealed that the prepared materials lie in the 15–30 °C temperature range. Also, 300 thermal melt/freeze cycles were conducted which showed ±10% variation in terms of the melting peak for most of the PCMs, with the average latent heat of fusion between 130 and 170 kJ/kg. The TGA analysis showed that most of the PCMs are thermally stable up to 100 °C and useful for medium-low storage applications, and FTIR analysis showed that the materials are chemically stable after repeated thermal cycles. Based on cycle test performances, the developed materials were found to be reliable for long-term use in building and photovoltaic applications.
Highlights
Thermal energy storage is an important energy storage technique
This paper deals with the development and thermal cycle test of ternary developed
A thermal cycle test, up to 300 cycles was conducted for the 28 developed PCMs
Summary
Thermal energy storage is an important energy storage technique. There are three most prevalent methods by which thermal energy can be stored i.e., sensible, latent, or thermochemical storage. One of the essential requirements for a PCM in a thermal system is the life of the storage material which relies on consistent thermophysical properties with time i.e., the phase transition temperature and latent heat storage capability over repeated melt/freeze cycles [8,9]. Several authors have developed fatty acid based PCMs and their eutectics and composites, and have undertaken cycle tests to understand their thermal stability after several melt/freeze cycles. The weight ratio of CA-PA-SA was 79.3:14.7:6.0 They conducted 500 thermal cycles on the prepared composite which confirmed that the PCM was thermally stable. To test the thermal stability of the developed PCMs, 300 melt/freeze cycles were conducted using thermostatic chambers. A cost analysis was performed, which showed that the developed PCMs have a low cost and can be afforded by the consumer as per their convenience
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