THERMAL ENERGY STORAGE IN NANOCOMPOSITES

Abstract

With the urgent need to harvest and storeenergy, the design of a new generation of energy storagemediums has grown in importance. On the other hand,nanocomposites have been significantly broadened toencompass a large variety of one, two, and threedimensionalsystems made of distinctly dissimilarcomponents mixed at the nanometer scale. Besides achievingcomposites that have desirable properties, there is also thepossibility of gaining new properties, which are unknown inthe parent constituent materials. In this paper,nanocomposites based carbon nanofibers filled polymerhave been designed, fabricated, and introduced as thermalstorage mediums. The thermal properties for the newnanocomposites have been measured experimentally and thetransient temperature response for each one of them hasbeen recorded during the solidification process to predictthe cooling rate. Additionally, the thermal performance ofthe established nanocomposites has been studied.Index Terms ⎯ Carbon nanofibers, shear mixing, thermalconductivity, paraffin wax.