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Phase Change Materials for Thermal Energy Storage (Volume II)

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 July 2023) | Viewed by 1014

Special Issue Editor

Laboratory for Heating, Sanitary and Solar Technology, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Interests: solar storage technology; thermal energy storage; solar energy storage for buildings
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Phase change materials (PCM) are becoming more and more popular for their use in different thermal energy storage (TES) systems: in buildings for heating and cooling, cooling of electronic devices, batteries, biomedical and industrial processes, and concentrating solar power or solar cooling plants.

These materials can store and release high amounts of energy by latent heat and reduce the size and weight of systems based on conventional materials. They can be also coupled with renewable energy-based systems or be used to shift the peak load.

This Special Issue will publish the best research and review papers on the development and enhancement of PCMs, their testing at the lab or prototype scale, the development of dedicated numerical models, and more especially on their use in advanced applications.

It is my pleasure to invite you to submit a manuscript for this Special Issue. Full papers, communications, and reviews are all welcome.

Dr. Uroš Stritih
Guest Editor

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.

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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
  • energy storage
  • numerical models
  • experiments
  • applications

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

28 pages, 1118 KiB  
Review
A Review of Solar-Coupled Phase Change Materials in Buildings
by Shahid Aziz, Tariq Talha, Abdur Rehman Mazhar, Junaid Ali and Dong-Won Jung
Materials 2023, 16(17), 5979; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16175979 - 31 Aug 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 791
Abstract
Buildings use a significant percentage of the total energy consumed worldwide. Striving for energy conservation within buildings is of prime concern for researchers. Hence, scientists are aggressively exploring new energy storage and supply methods to reduce exorbitantly fluctuating energy demands and increase the [...] Read more.
Buildings use a significant percentage of the total energy consumed worldwide. Striving for energy conservation within buildings is of prime concern for researchers. Hence, scientists are aggressively exploring new energy storage and supply methods to reduce exorbitantly fluctuating energy demands and increase the share of renewable energy in building energy consumption. Solar systems that incorporate phase change materials (PCMs) for thermal storage have significant potential to serve in this context. These systems are not yet able to endure the significant energy demands, but they are being continually improved. The aim of this paper is to explore the existing solar PCM systems that are being studied or that are installed for use in indoor heating/cooling. As per the outcome of this systematic review, it has been observed that when coupled with solar thermal energy, the configuration of PCMs can either use passive or active techniques. Passive techniques are usually less efficient and more costly to implement in a building structure, resulting in active heat exchangers being widely implemented with better technical and economic results. At the same time, it has been observed that for most domestic buildings, organic PCMs with phase change temperatures of up to 42 °C and thermal conductivities of up to 0.56 W/m.K are most suitable for integration in solar thermal energy production. Hybrid systems are also commonly used for larger commercial buildings, in which the solar PCM system (SPCMS) provides a fraction of the total load. Additionally, the Stefan number is the most common technical parameter that is used to assess this performance, along with the effective thermal conductivity of the PCM after using enhancement techniques. The key economic indicator is annual savings per year, with most SPCMSs having a payback period of between 6 to 30 years. This review provides designers and researchers with key insights in terms of formulating a basis in the domain of coupling PCMs with solar thermal energy, especially within non-industrial buildings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Phase Change Materials for Thermal Energy Storage (Volume II))
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