Thermal conductivity enhancement of treated petroleum waxes, as phase change material, by a nano alumina: Energy storage

This work reported that waxes are a big source for the latent heat storage as phase change materials but they suffer from the weakness in their thermal conductivity so different types of additives are needed to enhance their thermal conductivity. A sort of Paraffin Wax (PW) and Microcrystalline Wax (MW) composites with different loading levels (0.5, 1 and 2 wt%) of a Nano Alumina were successfully synthesized as Phase Change Materials (PCM). The resultant composite samples were characterized by Polarized Optical Microscope (POM), Deferential Scanning Calorimetric (DSC), X-ray diffraction (XRD) besides studying the Thermal Conductivity to investigate their homogeneity and heat storage capability, Data revealed that PW composites, with increasing the loading levels, have better thermal conductivity and latent heat than MW composites.