Liquid metal gallium laden organic phase change material for energy storage: An experimental study

This paper presents the experimental study on the thermophysical behavior, thermal cyclic characteristics and energy storage performance of liquid metal (LM) laden in organic solid-liquid phase change material (PCM) for energy storage. In this view, Gallium (Ga) is added into D-Mannitol (DM) with a weight fraction of 0.1% and 0.5% by dispersion technique using a ball mill. Repeated melting/freezing cycle was carried out for 350 cycles and the samples were characterized using Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), Thermogravimetry Analysis (TGA) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR). The DM/Ga composite PCM showed enhanced thermal conductivity of ∼8.4%, ∼27.8% for 0.1 and 0.5 wt % Ga as compared to pure DM. XRD studies reveal that the pure DM exhibited β polymorphic phase while TGA and FTIR analysis confirm the thermal reliability and chemical stability of composites in the temperature range of 50-200 °C. Non isothermal crystal kinetic study proved that the addition of Ga increased the crystallization rate due to heterogeneous nucleation effect and leads to the reduction in subcooling temperature of the PCM. The experimental setup results to test the charging and discharging performance of the composite PCM revealed that the total time for one complete cycle reduced from 97.48 min for pure DM to 84.73 min and 63.92 min for DM-Ga composite with 0.1 wt % and 0.5 wt % respectively. Based on the results obtained, D-Mannitol based composites could be recommended as potential PCM candidates for solar heat and industrial waste heat recovery application due to its high energy density capacity, thermal/chemical stability and good heat transfer performance.