Thermal Protection Performance of Phase Changing Material Based on Polyethylene Glycol

Abstract

Phase change materials (PCM) are substances with a high heat of fusion which, through melting and solidifying at certain temperatures, are capable to store or release a large amount of energy. This phenomenon can be utilized in designing heat protective materials as well as in thermal energy storage systems. One of the approaches to avoid materials leaching from a structure, where PCMs are incorporated, is to blend them with suitable polymers. To have a proper blend it is necessary to choose a compatible polymer with a PCM. It is important to assess the optimized concentration of PCM in polymer matrix and the phase structure and morphology of the blend, which causes the best heat protection. In this work, the influence of polyethylene glycol (PEG) as PCMs in epoxy resin matrix on heat protection was investigated. A special performance test was designed to study timetemperature behavior of the prepared samples and DSC and SEM tests to observe the melting point, heat of fusion and morphology of the samples. The results indicated that increases in PCM content led to better heat protection and the best concentration for PEG was found to be 60% wt. Time-temperature curves show that increases of temperature for PCM samples is very slow compared with net epoxy sample. PCM samples curves show plateau in melting region. In this region, they show nearly 15°C temperature lower than a net epoxy sample. The plateau region makes a delay time in temperature increment, which is about 22 min for PEG samples compared with a net epoxy.

Keywords

• phase changing material
• epoxy
• polyethylene glycol
• thermal protection
• effective thermal conductivity