Cost-effective device to characterize phase change materials
Résumé
Phase Change Materials (PCM) have been a emerging research topic for the last few years. However, the lack of detailed and precise information regarding their thermophysical properties is a major concern for researchers. The current paper presents a simple method to determine the specific heat (Cp), thermal conductivity (K) and melting temperature (Tm) of a PCM using a novel low cost device. Compared to the conventional existing methods such as Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), T-history, panel test and simple thermal analysis, this new method grants the following features: simplicity and ease of manufacturing and the ability to measure the thermophysical properties of heterogeneous PCMs samples without a reference material. Using this novel device, the thermophysical properties of the sodium sulfate decahydrate were measured and good agreement is obtained with values collected from the open literature using other devices.