Thermal energy storage using calcium chloride hexahydrate

Abstract

The solid-liquid phase change material named as PCM-Ca with 49.1% in mass water, 49.7% calcium chloride, and 1.2% strontium chloride was discovered and outlined in this paper. Differential scanning calorimetry, simultaneous thermal analyzer, thermal conductivity analyzer, temperature recorder, and digital vibrating- tube densimeter were used to characterize the thermal properties of PCM-Ca. The results indicated that PCM-Ca has the phase change temperature at 28.7 °C, the latent heats in the process of fusing and crystallizing are 193.4 and 193.0 kJ/kg, the thermal conductivity is 1.2801 W/mK at the melting point, and the density is 1.48 ·103 kg/m3 at room temperature. Thirty times repeated thermal cycling tests show excellent thermal stability in terms of latent heat and nucleation temperature, and the maximum deviations of the latent heat and the phase change temperature of PCM-Ca are 0.2% and 2.7%, respectively.