An Experimental Study Of Solid-liquid Phase Change Heat Transfer Of Nanocomposite Phase Change Materials Toward Thermal Energy Storage

Formation of nanocomposite phase change materials (PCMs) with improved effective thermal conductivity, by dispersing highly thermally conductive nanostructured fillers, is a promising novel approach to addressing the issue of low thermal conductivity associated with conventional candidates of phase change materials. Nanocomposite PCMs represent the application of composite material technologies to phase change thermal energy storage, inspired by the cooperative innovation between the emerging nanomaterials science and the conventional engineering thermophysics and energy utilization disciplines. The past research has mainly focused on preparation and thermal characterization of nanocomposite PCMs, and has moved gradually toward assessment of performance of the solid-liquid phase change energy storage processes. This paper reviews the recent studies of solid-liquid phase change energy storage processes, and summarizes the relevant advances from both dynamics performance of phase change energy storage systems and typical heat transfer processes involving solidification/melting, with an emphasis on the experimental verification of the schemes for predicting the effective thermophysical properties of nanocomposite PCMs that are used in the numerical simulations. On the basis of in-house measurement of thermal properties of nanocomposite PCMs, the process of solid-liquid phase change energy storage processes of Nanocomposit phase change are investigated experimentally. The influence of changes of thermophysical properties of nanocomposit PCMs on phase change heat transfer are analyzed by performing the experiments of unidirectional solidification and melting of nanocomposit PCMs.