The most commonly used PCMs are salt hydrates, fatty acids and esters, and various paraffins (such as octadecane). Recently also ionic liquids were investigated as novel PCMs.
As most of the organic solutions are water-free, they can be exposed to air, but all salt based PCM solutions must be encapsulated to prevent water evaporation or uptake. Both types offer certain advantages and disadvantages and if they are correctly applied some of the disadvantages becomes an advantage for certain applications.
They have been used since the late 19th century as a medium for thermal storage applications. They have been used in such diverse applications as refrigerated transportation for rail and road applications and their physical properties are, therefore, well known.
Unlike the ice storage system, however, the PCM systems can be used with any conventional water chiller both for a new or alternatively retrofit application. The positive temperature phase change allows centrifugal and absorption chillers as well as the conventional reciprocating and screw chiller systems or even lower ambient conditions utilizing a cooling tower or dry cooler for charging the TES system.
The temperature range offered by the PCM technology provides a new horizon for the building services and refrigeration engineers regarding medium and high temperature energy storage applications. The scope of this thermal energy application is wide-ranging of solar heating, hot water, heating rejection (i.e., cooling tower), and dry cooler circuitry thermal energy storage applications.
Since PCMs transform between solid–liquid in thermal cycling, encapsulation naturally became the obvious storage choice.
*Encapsulation of PCMs
**Macro-encapsulation: Early development of macro-encapsulation with large volume containment failed due to the poor thermal conductivity of most PCMs. PCMs tend to solidify at the edges of the containers preventing effective heat transfer.
**Micro-encapsulation: Micro-encapsulation on the other hand showed no such problem. It allows the PCMs to be incorporated into construction materials, such as concrete, easily and economically. Micro-encapsulated PCMs also provide a portable heat storage system. By coating a microscopic sized PCM with a protective coating, the particles can be suspended within a continuous phase such as water. This system can be considered a phase change slurry (PCS).
**Molecular-encapsulation is another technology, developed by Dupont de Nemours that allows a very high concentration of PCM within a polymer compound. It allows storage capacity up to 515 kJ/m for a 5 mm board (103 MJ/m). Molecular-encapsulation allows drilling and cutting through the material without any PCM leakage.
As phase change materials perform best in small containers, therefore they are usually divided in cells. The cells are shallow to reduce static head – based on the principle of shallow container geometry. The packaging material should conduct heat well; and it should be durable enough to withstand frequent changes in the storage material's volume as phase changes occur. It should also restrict the passage of water through the walls, so the materials will not dry out (or water-out, if the material is hygroscopic). Packaging must also resist leakage and corrosion. Common packaging materials showing chemical compatibility with room temperature PCMs include stainless steel, polypropylene, and polyolefin.
Nanoparticles such as carbon nanotubes, graphite, graphene, metal and metal oxide can be dispersed in PCM. It is worth noting that inclusion of nanoparticles will not only alter thermal conductivity characteristic of PCM but also other characteristics as well, including latent heat capacity, sub-cooling, phase change temperature and its duration, density and viscosity. The new group of PCMs called NePCM. NePCMs can be added to metal foams to build even higher thermal conductive combination.