Enhancing thermal conductivity of palmitic acid based phase change materials with carbon nanotubes as fillers

Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as produced are usually entangled and not ready to be dispersed into organic matrix. CNTs were treated by mechano-chemical reaction with ball milling the mixture of potassium hydroxide and the pristine CNTs. Hydroxide radical functional groups have been introduced on the CNT surfaces, which enabled to make stable and homogeneous CNT composites. Treated CNTs were successfully dispersed into the palmitic acid matrix without any surfactant. Transient short-hot-wire apparatus was used to measure the thermal conductivities of these nanotube composites. Nanotube composites have substantially higher thermal conductivities than the base palmitic acid matrix, with the enhancement increasing with the mass fraction of CNTs in both liquid state and solid state. The enhancements of the thermal conductivity are about 30% higher than the reported corresponding values for palmitic acid based phase change nanocomposites containing 1 wt% CNTs treated by concentrated acid mixture. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.