Polyethylene glycol / Calcium carbonate composite as a form stable Phase Change Material for Thermal Energy Storage

With the growing demand of energy and its crisis on the environmental front, it becomes essential to develop thermal energy storage devices which can be used to bridge the gap between availability of energy and its utilisation... [ view full abstract ]

With the growing demand of energy and its crisis on the environmental front, it becomes essential to develop thermal energy storage devices which can be used to bridge the gap between availability of energy and its utilisation at a desired time. Latent heat storages, in the form of ‘phase change materials (PCM)’ - are a part of thermal energy storages and one such upcoming area of research which has an advantage of good temperature control and high heat storage capacity. In this research, an effort has been made to use renewable sources of material to prepare PCM which can be used for building applications. To develop this, shape stabilised phase change material was prepared using polyethylene glycol (PEG) and calcium carbonate. Polyethylene glycol, the well known organic phase change material was used as a soft segment and calcium carbonate was used as the inorganic hard segment. Microwave assisted blending was used to physically blend the two components so that PEG is fixed well in the matrix of calcium carbonate to prevent its leakage above its melting temperature. It was optimised for its process parameters. Major advantages of this method was use of less solvent, ease of processing and less time required as compared to other methods, making it suitable for practical purpose. No additional containers or storages are required unlike other PCMs as they undergo solid - solid phase transitions. Form stability test or leakage test was carried out to check the same. Enthalpy of the prepared PCM was measured by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), which was found to be 70.32 J/g. FTIR of the final composite shows the peaks of both PEG and calcium carbonate, confirming the presence of both components. It was also characterised for other supporting parameters. The detailed process of preparation and the result obtained will be presented during the conference.