Fabrication and thermophysical characterization of microencapsulated stearyl alcohol as thermal energy storage material

This study discusses the preparation and thermophysical characterization of microencap-sulated stearyl alcohol (SA) for thermal energy storage and heat transportation applications. The developed microcapsules consist of SA, an organic phase change material (PCM) core material, and melamine formaldehyde (MF) shell material. The PCM microcapsules have been synthesized using sodium dodecyl sulfate as a surfactant using an in-situ polymerization technique and sub-jected to various thermal and structural characterization techniques. The results revealed that pre-pared microencapsulated PCM (MPCM) with 0.25 g of surfactant and 5 g of PCM exhibits better morphological structure with an average diameter of 4.7 mm. The onset melting point and latent heat were estimated as 42 degrees C and 137.7 Jg-1, respectively. The highest encapsulation ratio of 51.9 % and 52.3 % were observed for the core to the shell ratio of 5:8.4. The MPCMs are thermally stable and the decomposition temperature of the MPCM was higher than the pure PCM. The devel-oped MPCM shows good chemical stability and no leakage during the phase change process. The obtained results elucidate the suitability of the developed MPCM in thermal energy storage appli-cations.(c) 2023 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier BV on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

This study focuses on the preparation and thermophysical characterization of microencapsulated stearyl alcohol (SA) for thermal energy storage and heat transportation applications. The synthesized PCM microcapsules show good morphological structure, with an average diameter of 4.7 mm. The developed MPCM exhibits thermally stability and chemical stability during the phase change process.