Medium Temperature Phase Change Materials Thermal Characterization by the T-History Method and Differential Scanning Calorimetry

TL;DR

This study compares the T-History and DSC methods for thermal characterization of medium-temperature phase change materials, introducing glycerin as a substitute for water in the T-History method for higher melting point analysis.

Contribution

It proposes a novel adaptation of the T-History method using glycerin for medium melting temperature PCMs and validates it against DSC measurements.

Findings

Both methods show good agreement in enthalpy measurements.

Glycerin effectively replaces water for higher melting point PCM characterization.

The methods are complementary and consistent with existing literature.

Abstract

This paper presents a thermal characterization of salt mixtures applying the T-History Method and the Differential Scanning Calorimetry DSC techniques. By using water as a standard substance, the original T-History method was developed to analyze materials with melting points under 100 Celsius. This is the first research that proposes to replace water by glycerin to characterize medium melting temperature PCMs from 140 to 220 Celsius. Moreover, the DSC technique was used to validate and compare the results obtained with the T-history method for each mixture. For instance, the system compound of 40 KNO$_3$ to 60 NaNO$_3$ was studied, and the enthalpy of fusion determined by THM and DSC differs by 2.1% between each method. The results given by the two methods for all mixtures showed that both techniques are complementary and present satisfactory agreement with the specialized literature.