Paraffin wax mixtures as phase change materials

Melting of the binary mixture system of tetradecane and hexadecane in Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) cell has been investigated experimentally and numerically. Different concentrations of tetradecane-hexadecane paraffin mixture were studied. It is found that the phase change process of the binary mixture takes place over a temperature range and the temperature range depends on both the heating rate and the mixture composition. The proposed study shows also that for the same concentration of tetradecane and using various heating rates, we will be able to predict the solidus and liquidus temperature of the binary mixture from DSC curves. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.