Review on Development and Investigations of Phase Change Materials in Thermal Energy Storage
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Review on Development and Investigations of Phase Change Materials in Thermal Energy Storage Zhu Xiaoqin1, Hu Jin1, Cao Zhaosheng1, Lu Jiansheng1, Sun Jialin1, and Noureddine BenAbdallah2 1 Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, 650093, China, People's Republic of 2 Dalhousie University, Halifax, B3J2X4, Canada ABSTRACT Thermal energy storage with PCMs is a kind of energy storage technology widely used in many engineering fields. This paper reviews the development and investigations of PCMs in thermal energy storage systems of various engineering applications. There are many PCMs that melt and solidify at a wide range of temperatures, making them attractive in a lot of applications. Various categories of PCMs suitable for thermal energy storage are introduced, and the investigations on their important enhancement techniques are also discussed. INTRODUCTION Thermal energy storage plays important roles in conserving available energy and improving its utilization. It is also an efficient means of storing and recovering the energy upon short or long term demand. There are two kinds of methods: sensible heat storage and latent heat storage in thermal energy storage. Since latent heat storage with PCMs has the advantages over sensible heat storage media because of its higher heat storage capacity, lower storage temperature, isothermal operation and less storage space, it is widely used in various engineering applications concerning thermal energy storage in buildings, greenhouses, solar energy utilization et al. Latent heat storage technique is a key to the efficient utilization of thermal energy. It is becoming an attractive means of thermal energy storage, as is discussed from PCMs to some important enhancement techniques in this review paper. DEVELOPMENT OF PCMS Current interests in phase change storage technique can probably be traced back to earlier development work on solar heat storage for space heating just after World War II, especially is subjected to the influence of energy crisis in 1970s. The search for alternate approaches more volume-efficient than sensible heat storage in water containers and rock beds, naturally led to the investigations of latent heat storage systems[1]. Most early studies of latent heat storage focused on the fusion-solidification of low-cost, readily available salt hydrates, initially showing the greatest promise[2]. Although salt hydrates have some advantages such as high latent heats of fusion, small changes in volume, and high thermal conductivity, most of them have the major
problems of supercooling and phase segregation. These problems often plague the thermal behavior of salt hydrates and cause random variation or progressive drifting of the transition zone over repeated phase change cycles. Therefore, some investigations were made for these problems[3-5] and the means to tackle or considerably reduce supercooling and phase segregation have been gained[6]. These means also play active roles in the development of reliable and practical storage syste
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