Recent progress on Carbon-based nanomaterial for phase change materials: Prospects and challenges

This investigation conducted a thorough review of the application of nanomaterials to improve the performance of phase change material (PCM) for energy storage applications. It was deduced that issues pertaining to thermal conductivity coupled with a leakage are key factors restricting the wider application of PCM. In this regard, the application of nanomaterial is considered a very promising and practical technique to address this challenge. The specific application of carbon-based nanomaterial (CBM) embedded in PCM has been found to be very efficient, hence improving the PCM performance. The impact of the CBM on the PCM is enormous due to their excellent thermal characteristics, along with enhanced electrical and mechanical characteristics. The applications of various dimensional CBMs were critically explored and presented in this work. The merits and demerits of these materials were also carefully discussed. The addition of CBM has shown to result in an increase in thermal conductivity up to 264% depending on the material and loading, which has resulted in enhancement of the thermal characteristics by up to 28 times, which can be attributed to the extremely high thermal conductivity of CBM within the range of 6–2,500 W/m.K. Additionally, the incorporation of CBM has been shown to reduce leakage in the case of microencapsulated PCM. The mechanical strength of PCM-cement material has been shown to increase upon the addition of CBM as well. The stability of CBM-PCM in terms of phase transition temperature and latent heat was found to be improved as well.