Design of a graphene oxide@melamine foam/polyaniline@erythritol composite phase change material for thermal energy storage

At present, only a single modification method is adopted to improve the shortcomings of erythritol (ET) as a phase change material (PCM). Compared with a single modification method, the synergistic effect of multiple modification methods can endow ET with comprehensive performance to meet the purpose of package, supercooling reduction, and enhancement of thermal conductivity. In this work, we innovatively combine graphene oxide (GO) nanosheet modified melamine foam (MF) and polyaniline (PANI) to con-struct a novel ET-based PCM by blending and porous material adsorption modification. PANI as the nucle-ation center can enhance the crystallization rate, thereby reducing the supercooling of ET. Meanwhile, GO@MF foam can not only be used as a porous support material to encapsulate ET but also as a heat con-duction reinforcement to improve heat storage and release rate. As a result, the supercooling of GO@MF/ PANI@ET (GMPET) composite PCM decreases from 91.2 degrees C of pure ET to 57.9 degrees C and its thermal conduc-tivity (1.58 W center dot m-1 center dot K-1) is about three times higher than that of pure ET (0.57 W center dot m-1 center dot K-1). Moreover, after being placed at 140 degrees C for 2 h, there is almost no ET leakage in the GMPET composite PCM, and the mass loss ratio is less than 0.75%. In addition, the GMPET composite PCM displays a high melting enthalpy of about 259 J center dot g-1 and a high initial mass loss temperature of about 198 degrees C. Even after the 200th cycling test, the phase transition temperature and the latent heat storage capacity of the GMPET PCM all remain stable. This work offers an effective and promising strategy to design ET-based composite PCM for the field of energy storage.(c) 2022 The Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China, and Chemical Industry Press Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

In this study, a novel erythritol-based phase change material (PCM) was developed by combining graphene oxide (GO) modified melamine foam (MF) and polyaniline (PANI) through blending and porous material adsorption modification. The composite PCM showed improved performance in terms of supercooling reduction, thermal conductivity enhancement, and thermal stability. The results indicate that the composite PCM has potential applications in energy storage.