Carbon Foam Infused with Pentaglycerine for Thermal Energy Storage Applications

Abstract

A thermal energy storage device that uses pentaglycerine as a phase change material was developed. This solid-state phase change material was embedded in a graphite foam thermal conduction enhancer. This device and another identically constructed device which uses a paraffin phase change material were tested by imposing an input flux of 6.0 W/cm 2 on one end. The opposite end was either insulated or actively cooled with an output flux that varied from 3.1 to 5.4 W/cm 2 . The resulting temperature distributions within the devices were recorded at five locations. This information was used to determine the specific energy storage capacity and the cycling performance of each device. It was found that the pentaglycerine/graphite foam combination is capable of a specific storage capacity of 67 J/g. It demonstrated a storage capacity that was greater than that of the paraffin/foam device, by eliminating the volume change and leakage problems associated with solid-liquid phase change materials. In addition, the pentaglycerine/graphite foam thermal energy storage behavior was not degraded by thermal cycling.