EXPERIMENTAL STUDY AND THERMAL CHARACTERIZATION OF PHASE CHANGE COMPOSITE MATERIAL

Phase change materials(PCMs) has applications in many areas of daily life like automotive, aerospace, consumer -related and thermal engineering industries. Continuous effort is made in developing different composite PCMs and improving the performance characteristics of them to use in different applications. The work is aimed towards the analytical and experimental method of determining the thermal conductivity of phase change material and its variation with temperature for different weight ratios of SiO2 PCM composite. This has been investigated by preparing the SiO2 PCM composite specimens of 0%, 5%, 10% SiO2 for normal SiO2. The specimen prepared is experimentally tested in the apparatus developed. In this setup, the specimen is treated as the composite hollow cylinder containing two copper cylinders and one intermediate PCM cylinder. Heat transfer through this composite cylinder in the radial direction is studied, in turn, the thermal conductivity of the PCM is determined and its variation with temperature is also examined. So an effort is made in developing an apparatus for investigating the thermal conductivity of phase change materials and enhancing the thermal conductivity of PCMS by adding normal and SiO2 in different weight ratios. Comparison of thermal conductivity for different specimens prepared is made and variation of thermal conductivity with temperature is studied for analyzing the thermal performance of phase change materials.