A Simple Method for Thermal Characterization of Low-Melting Temperature Phase Change Materials (PCMs)

The successful implementation of a high-efficient latent heat storage system necessitates an appropriate experimental approach to investigate and quantify the variations of the Phase Change Material (PCM) thermal properties caused by its aging, as well as its potential demixing induced by cyclic freezing and melting. In this paper, we present a concept for the PCM characterization. The proposed method is relatively simple to be implemented. It consists of a cyclic cooling and melting of the PCM sample placed into a tube and monitoring its temperature evolution with a set of temperature sensors. In our work, the temperature evolution of the sample, as well as its sensitivity to the thermal parameters have been numerically investigated using the COMSOL Multiphysics® software.