Material Selection for Latent Heat Based High Temperature Solar Thermal Energy Storage

The material selection of a phase change material based high temperature solar thermal energy storage device is presented. Candidate materials that are abundant, inexpensive and do not represent dangers of toxicity or auto ignition at working temperatures will be shown. The storage system for solar energy requires materials with good thermal conductivity, high energy density per unit of volume and mass for the heat reservoir; high temperature resistance and good thermal conductivity in the zone where energy is inserted and extracted; low thermal conductivity and high temperature resistance for the material to be used as heat reservoir container and thermal insulation in order to decrease the reservoir container temperature as close to room temperature. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).