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Phase Change Materials and Storage Applications

A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 December 2023) | Viewed by 1654

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
CINBIO, Grupo GAME, Departamento de Física Aplicada, Universidade de Vigo, 36310 Vigo, Spain
Interests: nanofluids; phase change materials; thermophysical properties; rheology; materials characterization

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Guest Editor
Birmingham Centre for Energy Storage, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
Interests: thermal energy storage; waste heat recovery; manufacturing; phase change material

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Thermal energy storage (TES) has been proven to be a technological solution to decrease energy consumption and CO2 emissions towards NetZero policies. TES can overcome the temporal and geographical mismatch faced by other technologies. Among TES technologies, latent heat TES, which uses phase change materials (PCMs), can store and deliver heat at a quasi-isothermal temperature. For decades, different PCMs (organics, inorganics, eutectics) have been developed, studied, and tested under operational conditions. However, recent advances have shown improved thermophysical properties and heat transfer behaviour following different strategies such as including the use of fins, dispersion of nanomaterials, or encapsulation.

This Special Issue aims to provide up-to-date studies on the integration of PCMs in different storage applications, where PCM development has improved the system performance. Original research articles (experimental or numerical) and reviews are welcome.

Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • heating and cooling;
  • air conditioning;
  • thermal management;
  • solar collectors;
  • waste heat recovery;
  • domestic hot water;
  • buildings;
  • cold chain.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Jose I. Prado
Dr. M. Elena Navarro Rivero
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • phase change materials
  • thermal energy storage
  • latent heat
  • energy efficiency
  • thermal management

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 3144 KiB  
Article
Apple-like Shape of Freezing Paraffin Wax Droplets and Its Origin
by Pritam Kumar Roy, Shraga Shoval, Nir Shvalb, Leonid A. Dombrovsky, Oleg Gendelman and Edward Bormashenko
Materials 2023, 16(16), 5514; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16165514 - 08 Aug 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1224
Abstract
Paraffin wax stores energy in the form of latent heat at a nearly constant temperature during melting and releases this energy during solidification. This effect is used in industrial energy storage. At the same time, the possible deformation of even small volumes of [...] Read more.
Paraffin wax stores energy in the form of latent heat at a nearly constant temperature during melting and releases this energy during solidification. This effect is used in industrial energy storage. At the same time, the possible deformation of even small volumes of material as a result of phase change is insufficiently studied. In this paper, the physical nature of such deformation, probably for the first time, is studied on the example of a droplet of paraffin wax. An unusual change in the shape of a melted droplet of paraffin wax placed on a relatively cold glass plate was observed in the laboratory experiments. As the droplet solidifies, its upper surface becomes nearly flat, and a dimple is formed in the center of this surface, making the droplet look like a fruit (pumpkins are more commonly shaped like this, but the authors prefer apples). A series of experiments, as well as physical and numerical modeling of the droplet’s thermal state, taking into account the formation of a mushy zone between liquidus and solidus, made it possible to understand the role of gravity and gradual increase in viscosity and density of paraffin wax on changing the droplet shape and, in particular, to clarify the mechanism of formation of the dimple on its upper. It was shown that the mushy zone between the liquidus and solidus of the paraffin wax is responsible for the dimple formation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Phase Change Materials and Storage Applications)
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