Effect of Adding Graphene Nano-Platelets With Surfactants on Bio-Based PCM Characteristics and its Cooling Performance

Author(s):  
Yahya Sheikh ◽  
Mohamed Gadalla ◽  
Muhammed Umair ◽  
Elmehaisi Mehaisi ◽  
Ahmed Azmeer

Abstract Phase change materials (PCM) are materials that absorb/release large amounts of thermal energy at constant temperatures during phase change. Consequently, PCMs could be effective when electronic cooling systems such as heat sinks and heat pipes are considered. In the selection of PCMs for cooling systems, bio-based PCMs are more effective when compared to inorganic PCM. However, bio-based PCMs have poor thermal conductivity and therefore suffer from poor heat transfer characteristics. The diffusion of certain additives within the PCM has proven successful in the enhancement of heat transfer during the cooling process. Graphene Nanoplatelets (GNPs) presents itself as one such additive. Using PureTemp PCM as a heat sink for an electric heater, this paper experimentally investigates the cooling performance of the heat sink when GnPs and various surfactants such as, SDS, SDBS and SSL, are added to the bio-based PCM. Finally, results indicate that the addition of GnPs increased the time taken for the heater to reach a reference temperature of 43 °C by nearly 12% when compared to PurePCM heat sink, indicating an improved cooling performance of the PCM heat sink when GnP’s were added. Furthermore, the experiment indicated that SSL surfactant showed a 9% increase in time taken to reach the reference temperature when compared to other surfactants. SDS surfactant indicated the highest increase in thermal conductivity when compared to other surfactants as it reported the highest increase of 147% when compared with the thermal conductivity of PurePCM.

Author(s):  
D. Zhou ◽  
C. Y. Zhao

Phase change materials (PCMs) have been widely used for thermal energy storage systems due to their capability of storing and releasing large amounts of energy with a small volume and a moderate temperature variation. Most PCMs suffer the common problem of low thermal conductivity, being around 0.2 and 0.5 for paraffin and inorganic salts, respectively, which prolongs the charging and discharging period. In an attempt to improve the thermal conductivity of phase change materials, the graphite or metallic matrix is often embedded within PCMs to enhance the heat transfer. This paper presents an experimental study on heat transfer characteristics of PCMs embedded with open-celled metal foams. In this study both paraffin wax and calcium chloride hexahydrate are employed as the heat storage media. The transient heat transfer behavior is measured. Compared to the results of pure PCMs samples, the investigation shows that the additions of metal foams can double the overall heat transfer rate during the melting process. The results of calcium chloride hexahydrate are also compared with those of paraffin wax.


2019 ◽  
Vol 141 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Arunachalam

Energy storage helps in waste management, environmental protection, saving of fossil fuels, cost effectiveness, and sustainable growth. Phase change material (PCM) is a substance which undergoes simultaneous melting and solidification at certain temperature and pressure and can thereby absorb and release thermal energy. Phase change materials are also called thermal batteries which have the ability to store large amount of heat at fixed temperature. Effective integration of the latent heat thermal energy storage system with solar thermal collectors depends on heat storage materials and heat exchangers. The practical limitation of the latent heat thermal energy system for successful implementation in various applications is mainly from its low thermal conductivity. Low thermal conductivity leads to low heat transfer coefficient, and thereby, the phase change process is prolonged which signifies the requirement of heat transfer enhancement techniques. Typically, for salt hydrates and organic PCMs, the thermal conductivity range varies between 0.4–0.7 W/m K and 0.15–0.3 W/m K which increases the thermal resistance within phase change materials during operation, seriously affecting efficiency and thermal response. This paper reviews the different geometry of commercial heat exchangers that can be used to address the problem of low thermal conductivity, like use of fins, additives with high thermal conductivity materials like metal strips, microencapsulated PCM, composite PCM, porous metals, porous metal foam matrix, carbon nanofibers and nanotubes, etc. Finally, different solar thermal applications and potential PCMs for low-temperature thermal energy storage were also discussed.


1999 ◽  
Vol 123 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keiji Sasao ◽  
Mitsuru Honma ◽  
Atsuo Nishihara ◽  
Takayuki Atarashi

A numerical method for simulating impinging air flow and heat transfer in plate-fin type heat sinks has been developed. In this method, all the fins of an individual heat sink and the air between them are replaced with a single, uniform element having an appropriate flow resistance and thermal conductivity. With this element, fine calculation meshes adapted to the shape of the actual heat sink are not needed, so the size of the calculation mesh is much smaller than that of conventional methods.


Author(s):  
David Gonzalez-Nino ◽  
Lauren M. Boteler ◽  
Dimeji Ibitayo ◽  
Nicholas R. Jankowski ◽  
Pedro O. Quintero

A simple and easy to implement 1-D heat transfer modeling approach is presented in order to investigate the performance of various phase change materials (PCMs) under fast transient thermal loads. Three metallic (gallium, indium, and Bi/Pb/Sn/In alloy) and two organic (erythritol and n-octadecane) PCMs were used for comparison. A finite-difference method was used to model the transient heat transfer through the system while a heat integration or post-iterative method was used to model the phase change. To improve accuracy, the material properties were adjusted at each iteration depending on the state of matter of the PCM. The model assumed that the PCM was in direct contact with the heat source, located on the top of the chip, without the presence of a thermal conductivity enhancement. Results show that the three metallic PCMs outperform organic PCMs during fast transient pulses in spite of the fact that two of the metallic PCMs (i.e. indium and Bi/Pb/Sn/In) have considerably lower volumetric heats of fusion than erythritol. This is due to the significantly higher thermal conductivity values of metals which allow faster absorption of the heat energy by the PCM, a critical need in high-energy short pulses. The most outstanding case studied in this paper, Bi/Pb/Sn/In having only 52% of erythritol’s heat of fusion, showed a maximum temperature 20°C lower than erythritol during a 32 J and 0.02 second pulse. This study has shown thermal buffering benefits by using a metallic PCM directly in contact with the heat source during short transient heat loads.


2013 ◽  
Vol 860-863 ◽  
pp. 862-866 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Fei Zheng ◽  
Zhong Zhu Qiu ◽  
Jie Chen

Phase change materials in the form of emulsion (PCE) is a category of novel phase change fluid used as heat storage and transfer media. It plays an important role in commercially viable applications (energy storage, particularly).The emulsion is made of microparticles of a phase change wax (a kind of paraffin or mixture ) as a phase change material (PCM), mixed paraffin directly with water. This paper presents information on the different PCM emulsions by different researchers. It gives the method of preparation of the PCE, and makes a special effort to investigate the heat transfer phenomena and the method of enhancing the thermal conductivity of the emulsion.


Author(s):  
Yannan Liang ◽  
Jiemin Zhou ◽  
Ying Yang ◽  
Ye Wu ◽  
Yanyan He

The use of phase-change materials for latent heat storage is a new type of environmentally-friendly energy-saving technologies. Molten salts, one kind of phase-change materials, which have high latent heats, and whose phase transition temperatures match the high temperatures of heat engines, are the most widely used high-temperature phase-change heat storage materials. However, the heat transfer at solid/liquid phase interface belongs to Micro/Nanoscale Heat transfer, lots of the thermal properties of molten salt at melting point is difficult to test. In this investigation, based on the theory that the thermal conductivity can be determined by measuring the speed of the propagation of the solid/liquid phase interface during phase change, a set of system is developed to investigate the thermal conductivity of molten salts at liquid/solid phase transformation point. Meanwhile, mathematical calculation is applied to intuitively simulate the melting and solidifying process in the phase change chamber, by which the error could be analyzed and partly corrected and the result precision could also be increased. And a series of verification experiments have been performed to estimate the precision and the applicability of the measuring system to evaluate the feasibility of the method and measuring system. This research will pave the way to the follow-on research on heat storage at high temperature in industry.


2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Li-Wu Fan ◽  
Zi-Qin Zhu ◽  
Min-Jie Liu ◽  
Can-Ling Xu ◽  
Yi Zeng ◽  
...  

The classical problem of constrained melting heat transfer of a phase change material (PCM) inside a spherical capsule was revisited experimentally in the presence of nanoscale thermal conductivity fillers. The model nano-enhanced PCM (NePCM) samples were prepared by dispersing self-synthesized graphite nanosheets (GNSs) into 1-dodecanol at various loadings up to 1% by mass. The melting experiments were carried out using an indirect method by measuring the instantaneous volume expansion upon melting. The data analysis was performed based on the homogeneous, single-component assumption for NePCM with modified thermophysical properties. It was shown that the introduction of nanofillers increases the effective thermal conductivity of NePCM, in accompaniment with an undesirable rise in viscosity. The dramatic viscosity growth, up to over 100-fold at the highest loading, deteriorates significantly the intensity of natural convection, which was identified as the dominant mode of heat transfer during constrained melting. The loss in natural convection was found to overweigh the decent enhancement in heat conduction, thus resulting in decelerated melting in the presence of nanofillers. Except for the case with the lowest heating boundary temperature, a monotonous slowing trend of melting was observed with increasing the loading.


2002 ◽  
Vol 124 (3) ◽  
pp. 164-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. B. Ma ◽  
G. P. Peterson

An extensive numerical analysis of the temperature distribution and fluid flow in a heat sink currently being used for cooling desktop computers was conducted, and demonstrated that if the base of a heat sink was fabricated as a heat pipe instead of a solid material, the heat transfer performance could be significantly increased. It was shown that as the heat sink length increases, the effect of the thermal conductivity of the base on the heat transfer performance increases to be a predictable limit. As the thermal conductivity is increased, the heat transfer performance of heat sinks is enhanced, but cannot exceed this limit. When the thermal conductivity increases to 2,370 W/m-K, the heat transfer performance of the heat sinks will be very close to the heat transfer performance obtained assuming a base with infinite thermal conductivity. Further increases in the thermal conductivity would not significantly improve the heat transfer performance of the heat sinks.


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