Volume 2, Issue 3 (September, 2023) – 3 articles
Cover Picture: Phase change materials (PCMs) often suffers leakage when used in thermal energy storage. In this work, for the sake of preventing leakage, three-dimensional interconnected montmorillonite aerogel (3D-Mt) has been designed through self-assembly method to encapsulate stearic acid (SA) as composite PCMs. The as prepared 3D-Mt with porous structure has encapsulated large amount of SA, which resulted in a high phase change enthalpy of 183 J/g. In addition, due to the surface tension and capillary forces of 3D-Mt aerogels, the SA were confined in the pore structure tightly, leading to excellent structural stability and good cycling performances during continuous solid-to-liquid phase change. In addition, due to the protection of 3D-Mt, the composite PCMs showed good shape stability and high mechanical strength. The prepared 3D-Mt/SA CPCMs can withstand a weight of 500 g without any deformation, and the loads are as high as 1.01 and 13.81 MPa under 55% and 80% deformation, respectively. With high heat storage capacity, good thermal stability, and excellent mechanical strength, the prepared 3D-Mt/SA CPCMs shows great application potential in the field of thermal energy storage.
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