Fabrication and characteristics of solar-driven phase change microcapsules with crystalline TiO 2 /CuS hybrid shell for
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Fabrication and characteristics of solar-driven phase change microcapsules with crystalline TiO2/CuS hybrid shell for solar energy conversion and storage Xiaoyue Fan, Xiaolin Qiua), Lixin Lu, Binglin Zhou Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Food Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, School of Mechanical Engineering, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214122, China a)Address all correspondence to this author. e-mail: [email protected] Received: 3 March 2020; accepted: 18 June 2020
To advance the utilization of solar thermal energy, a novel solar-driven microcapsule was designed by the combination of high-performance CuS nanoconverter and the microencapsulated n-Eicosane with a brookite TiO2 shell via in situ sol–gel method. The resultant n-Eicosane@TiO2/CuS microcapsules possessed excellent thermal properties with high latent heat density (171.7 J/g), high encapsulation efficiency (71.7%), and increased thermal conductivity (0.730 W/(m K)). SEM analysis clearly verified that CuS nanoparticles exhibited a uniform distribution on the surfaces. Most of all, the addition of CuS not only enlarged the absorption spectra from the UV to the visible and NIR region but also achieved high solar-to-thermal conversion efficiency (94.41%). Due to the high heat storage capability and solar irradiation utilization efficiency, this solar-driven microcapsule possesses great potential for the solar energy utilization.
Introduction Phase change materials (PCMs) have been regarded as a group of promising materials for thermal energy storage applications, especially the paraffin waxes which possess advantages like high enthalpy, reliable phase change performance, and limited supercooling, and so on [1, 2]. However, the low thermal conductivity and the leakage during the solid–liquid phase change process really restrict their practical applications [3]. Hence, to avoid these intrinsic problems, microencapsulation PCMs with shape stable walls have been widely developed to explore the better performance for PCMs [4]. As for shell materials consideration, it is vital to cover these basic requirements: high thermal conductivity, long-term reliability, mechanical strength, and thermophysical property, and so on. Meanwhile, to explore the diverse applications of the microcapsules, numerous bifunctional or multifunctional wall materials have been designed, including polystyrene (PS) [5], poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) [6], polyurethane (PU) [7], TiO2 [8], SiO2 [9], Al(OH)3 [10], CaCO3 [11], Cu2O [12], ZrO2 [13], ZnO [14], and organic–inorganic hybrid one [15, 16]. Obviously, compared with traditional organic shells, the inorganic ones, which could offer higher thermal and chemical stabilities,
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higher thermal conductivity, mechanical property, as well as flame resistance, are becoming more promising candidates in recent years [17]. TiO2, a classical N-type semiconductor material, due to its functional diversity, low cost, and low toxicity, is one of the most widely investigated wall materials [8]. TiO2 itself
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