Thermal Properties of Novel Phase-Change Materials Based on Tamanu and Coconut Oil Encapsulated in Electrospun Fiber Matrices

Evdoxia Paroutoglou, Peter Fojan, Leonid Gurevich and Alireza Afshari
Additional contact information
Evdoxia Paroutoglou: Department of Energy Performance, Indoor Environment and Sustainability of Buildings, Aalborg University, BUILD, 2450 København SV, Denmark
Peter Fojan: Department of Materials and Production, Aalborg University, 9220 Aalborg Øst, Denmark
Leonid Gurevich: Department of Materials and Production, Aalborg University, 9220 Aalborg Øst, Denmark
Alireza Afshari: Department of Energy Performance, Indoor Environment and Sustainability of Buildings, Aalborg University, BUILD, 2450 København SV, Denmark

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 12, 1-20

Abstract: The accumulation of thermal energy in construction elements during daytime, and its release during a colder night period is an efficient and green way to maintain a comfortable temperature range in buildings and vehicles. One approach to achieving this goal is to store thermal energy as latent heat of the phase transition using the so-called phase-change materials (PCMs). Vegetable oils came recently into focus as cheap, widely available, and environmentally friendly PCMs. In this study, we report the thermal properties of PCMs based on tamanu and coconut oils in three configurations: pure, emulsion, and encapsulated forms. We demonstrate the encapsulation of pure coconut- and tamanu-oil emulsions, and their mixtures and mixtures with commercial PCM paraffins in fiber matrices produced by a coaxial electrospinning technique. Polycaprolactone (PCL) was used as a shell, the PCM emulsion was formed by the studied oils, and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) were used as emulsifiers. The addition of commercially available paraffin RT18 into a 70/30 mixture of coconut and tamanu oil, successfully encapsulated in the core of a PCL shell, demonstrated latent heats of melting and solidification of 63.8 and 57.6 kJ/kg, respectively.

Keywords: PCM; coconut oil; tamanu oil; electrospun fiber matrix; encapsulation; DSC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/12/7432/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/12/7432/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:12:p:7432-:d:841521

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().