Thermal reliability and corrosion characteristics of an organic phase change materials for solar space heating applications

• Published in: Journal of energy storage 2019-06, Vol.23, p.98-105
• Main Authors: Raam Dheep, G., Sreekumar, A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accelerated thermal cycle test; Corrosion; Phase change materials; Solar air heater; Thermal reliability
• ISSN: 2352-152X; 2352-1538
• DOI: 10.1016/j.est.2019.03.009

•Identification of new organic phase change material.•Good thermal reliability of thermo-physical properties even after one thousand thermal cycles.•Less corrosive and compatible with heat exchanger containment materials.•Increased operational time of solar air heater for few more hours. The increasing interest in solar thermal energy storage necessitates the identification of new latent heat based phase change materials (PCMs). Testing the reliability and corrosion of newly identified PCMs upon repeated thermal charging and discharging cycles helps to evaluate the long term feasibility of latent heat storage system. Phenyl acetic acid (PAA) is an organic PCM with phase transition temperature of 75–80 °C and latent heat of 152 J/g. In this present work the thermal reliability on thermo-physical properties and corrosive nature of phenyl acetic acid is studied for 2000 accelerated thermal cycles. The experimental result shows that phase transition temperature and latent heat of fusion of PCM varies only ±1–3% and also has less corrosive nature to aluminium and stainless steel than copper metal containers throughout the thermal cycles. This study also comprises of experimental investigation on thermal performance of solar air heater (SAH) with built-in latent heat thermal energy storage. The solar air heater with PCM has outlet air temperature higher than ambient by 2–13 °C for 2.5 h and 1–8 °C for 2 h after solar hours at the mass flow rate of 30 and 45 kg/hr.m2 respectively. Therefore the newly identified phenyl acetic acid is a promising PCM for solar space heating applications due to good heat storage properties, long term thermal reliability and less corrosive nature.