Preparation and characterization of thermal conductivity enhanced shape stabilized phase change composite for thermal energy storage

Abstract Thermal energy management is fetching more importance, recently in many sectors including chemical/petrochemical, automotive, aerospace, and electronics. An attempt has been done on the investigation in thermal energy storage (TES) applications using phase change composites. To make the composite material suitable for potential devices the thermal conductivity should be high. For achieving this, fillers with higher thermal conductivity can be incorporated into polymers to form polymer composites. In the light of background study on the recent researches in this area, nanocomposites are expected to show good thermal conductivity behavior. In this work, ZnS/PMMA nanocomposites are used as the conductive polymer for thermal energy storage in which the ZnS nanoparticles are used as the fillers. The solution casting method is used to prepare the nanocomposites. Samples based on the weight percentage of filler are used for characterization. The thermal stability and conductivity of the composite material are evaluated using TGA and Thermal Conductivity Apparatus. The SEM analysis of ZnS particles shows the nanoscale size and morphology suitable for filler components. An enhancement of 72% in thermal conductivity is noted for the 6% (ZnS) sample with PMMA.