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- Conflict of Interest
- In relation to this article, we declare that there is no conflict of interest.
- Publication history
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Received January 2, 2024
Accepted March 24, 2024
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This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/3.0) which permits
unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Superior Thermal Conductivity and Charging Performance of Zinc Oxide Dispersed Paraffin Wax for Thermal Energy Storage Applications
Abstract
Organic phase change materials (PCM) such as paraffi n wax have lower thermal conductivity, compromising the rate of heat
transfer during charging and discharging. This work reports the improvement of the thermal conductivity of paraffi n wax
through dispersion of ZnO nanoparticles and its outcome in terms of heat transfer performance. ZnO–paraffi n wax (ZnO–PW)
nanocomposites were made by dispersing ZnO nanoparticles in paraffi n wax. An increase in thermal conductivity (76.4% for
10 wt. % nanocomposite) and reduction in specifi c heat (10.7% for 10 wt. % nanocomposite) upon nanoparticles’ addition to
paraffi n wax were observed. In a fi rst-of-its-kind work, we manifested that the improved thermal conductivity of ZnO–PW
nanocomposites, combined with potential improvements in liquid-phase thermal conductivity, resulted in a 96% increase in
the PCM side heat transfer coeffi cient in a tube-in-shell thermal energy storage unit operating under constant heat transfer
fl uid temperature. Thus, our fi ndings clearly show an increase in the thermal energy storage performance of a latent heat
thermal energy storage system (LHTES) using ZnO–PW nanocomposites as the energy storage medium.
