Experimental investigation of thermal characteristics of a mortar with or without a micro-encapsulated phase change material

• Achievement of an experimental investigation of a composite phase change material (PCM).
• Use of a thermophysical approach to achieve the main thermal characteristics.
• Improvement of the stored and released energy via PCM integration.
• Implementation of a composite PCM with potential applications in buildings.

This article deals with a method of thermal characterization of buildings materials including micro-encapsulated phase change materials (PCMs) incorporated into cement-mortars from simultaneous heat flux and temperature measurements. The thermal behavior of the sample and the conventional mortar are compared. The main goal of this method is to determine the latent heat and the temperature of the studied PCM to provide reference solutions allowing validating numerical simulations. In this work, the thermophysical characterization carried out here yields the experimental determination of conductivities, heat capacities and the latent heat of solid/liquid phase change as well as the phase change temperature of micro-encapsulated PCM embedded into cement mortars and common mortars in their implementation state. From the obtained results, it can be concluded that the considered composite PCM has potential thermal energy storage purpose in buildings.