Bionic study on latent heat thermal storage

Latent heat thermal storage (LHTS) using phase change materials (PCMs) faces a significant challenge of poor heat transport efficiency. Fortunately, nature has evolved numerous features and functions that can enhance material properties and heat transport efficiency. This paper provides a comprehensive review of bionic studies on LHTS technology, summarizes bionic strategies for improving LHTS performance, and explores in detail the research progress and challenges faced by bioinspired PCMs and LHTS configurations. The review demonstrates that natural morphology, structure, and function can improve heat charge/discharge efficiency. However, current research mainly focuses on simple configurations of morphological and structural bionics, so more attention is needed to develop high-level functional bionics to maximize LHTS performance. The paper also emphasizes the enhancement methods of heat transfer rate in bioinspired LHTS systems, such as synthesizing bionic hierarchical porous and three-dimensional networks, constructing biomimetic shells, extending the heat exchange area, enhancing the convective heat transfer, and optimizing the heat transport path in PCM regions. Importantly, future research should focus on micro/nano-scale bionics to construct bioinspired PCM and LHTS configurations with more advanced performance. Moreover, a complete enhancement mechanism of multiscale phase-change heat transport needs to be investigated for the development of multiscale biomimetic LHTS technology.

Automated summary

This paper reviews the research progress of bionic studies on latent heat thermal storage (LHTS) technology, summarizes bionic strategies for improving LHTS performance, and explores the research progress and challenges faced by bioinspired PCMs and LHTS configurations. The review demonstrates that natural morphology, structure, and function can improve heat charge/discharge efficiency, but more focus is needed on developing high-level functional bionics to maximize LHTS performance. The paper also emphasizes enhancement methods of heat transfer rate in bioinspired LHTS systems and highlights the importance of micro/nano-scale bionics and investigation of multiscale phase-change heat transport for the advancement of bioinspired LHTS technology.