(688a) Thermally Conductive Scaffold for Leakage-Free Phase Change Materials

Marjan Alsadat Kashfipour, Russell Dent, Nitin Mehra, and Jiahua Zhu*

Intelligent Composites Laboratory, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering,

The University of Akron, Akron, OH 44325 USA

*Corresponding author E-mail: jzhu1@uakron.edu

Phase Change Materials (PCMs) has recently attracted attentions due to their ability for storing and releasing heat as their latent heat during the phase change process. This property can be used for decreasing the waste of heat and solar energy. However, the low thermal conductivity and leakage in liquid state are the main problems of using PCMs for these applications. These problems have been addressed recently by infiltrating the PCMs into conductive porous scaffolds such as boron nitride aerogels. In this study, carbonized wood (C-wood) has been used as the scaffold for holding poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG) as the PCM. Carbonization of the wood under nitrogen environment helps increasing the size of pores in the wood, resulting in increasing the content of PEG to be held and enhancement of the heat that can be stored. In addition to improvement of shape stability, the carbonized network can act as a conductive pathway through the composite block. The thermal behavior, thermal conductivity, thermal stability and shape stability of the PEG/C-wood is investigated and compared to PEG.