Preparation and thermal characterization of paraffin/metal foam composite phase change material

The utilization of paraffin in the latent thermal energy storage (LTES) system for solar energy storage is hampered by its low thermal conductivity. Paraffin/nickel foam and paraffin/copper foam composite phase change materials (PCMs) were prepared using a vacuum impregnation method in the present study. The impregnation ratios which reflect the actual mass fraction of pure paraffin impregnated were studied comparatively for the impregnations with and without vacuum assistance. The surface porosity was obtained by employing the image processing approach. The thermal conductivities of the composite PCMs were measured by the transient plane heat source technique (TPS) as well as the steady state method, and the thermal behaviors were analyzed with a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). It is found that the surface porosity obtained from image analysis was in the range of 90–94%, whereas the bulk porosity predicted by the mass fraction was about 97%. Compared with pure paraffin, the thermal conductivities of the composite PCMs were drastically enhanced, e.g., the thermal conductivity of the paraffin/nickel foam composite was nearly three times larger than that of pure paraffin. The presence of porous metal foam made the phase change temperatures shift slightly, e.g., the deviations of the peak melting temperatures of the paraffin/nickel foam composite and paraffin/copper foam composite with the pore size of 25PPI from those of pure paraffin were 0.55°C and 0.40°C, respectively.