The Impact of Non-Ideal Phase Change Properties on Phase Change Thermal Energy Storage Device Performance: Article No. 108470

Phase change materials have been known to improve the performance of energy storage devices by shifting or reducing thermal/electrical loads. While an ideal phase change material is one that undergoes a sharp, reversible phase transition, real phase change materials do not exhibit this behavior and often have one or more non-idealities - glide, hysteresis, supercooling - associated with them. Experimental and modeling techniques to characterize these non-ideal properties are reasonably well understood, however, their impact on the performance of a thermal energy storage system is not fully understood. Here, we analyze the performance of a heat exchanger with a phase change material as a function of the different non-idealities, for a heating and a cooling application. We focus on the impact of these non-ideal behaviors on different modes of operation of the thermal energy storage device, which will serve as a useful guide to researchers on the relative importance of the non-ideal properties, along with the necessary accuracy required during an experimental characterization.