Experimental research on flow and heat transfer characteristics of latent functional thermal fluid with microencapsulated phase change materials

Latent functional thermal fluid (LFTF) has a higher heat capacity compared with traditional fluid. In this paper, microencapsulated phase change material (MicroPCM) slurry as LFTF, which was composed of water/ethanol as base fluid and parafin/melaine resin MicroPCM as additive, was prepared. The physical and thermal properties of the slurry with different MicroPCM mass fractions had been studied. In addition, the heat transfer performance of base fluid and MicroPCM slurry in a horizontal circular tube had been experimentally investigated. The results showed that the convective heat transfer coefficients of MicroPCM slurry were about 2 times and 3 times higher than that of base fluid when the mass fractions of MicroPCM were 5% and 10%, respectively. This indicated that the MicroPCM had great potential applications in heat transport and thermal energy storage. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.