Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)-enabled significant suppression of supercooling of erythritol for medium-temperature thermal energy storage. (February 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Shao, Xue-Feng; Yang, Sheng; Lin, Jia-Cheng; Teng, Hao-Ran; Fan, Li-Wu; Chiu, Justin NingWei; Yuan, Yan-Ping; Martin, Viktoria
• Is Part Of: Journal of energy storage. Volume 46(2022)
• Publication Date: 2022-02
• Subjects: Crystallization -- Erythritol -- Latent heat storage -- Phase change material -- Polyvinylpyrrolidone -- Supercooling; Energy storage -- Periodicals; Energy storage -- Research -- Periodicals; 621.3126
• DOI: 10.1016/j.est.2021.103915
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2352-152X

Abstract

Highlights: Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) was utilized to suppress the supercooling of erythritol. The degree of supercooling can be significantly reduced with small loading of PVP. Little sacrifice of heat storage capacity was achieved upon introduction of PVP. Latent heat of crystallization was found to increase with suppressed supercooling. PVP was proved to be a potential additive to improve the crystallization behaviors. Abstract: The supercooling effect is deemed to be a crucial issue for thermal energy storage using phase change materials (PCMs). The exploration of promising additives plays a decisive role in effective suppression efforts for suppressing the supercooling effect of a PCM. The present work proposed a potential additive, polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), to reduce the supercooling of erythritol, which is the most promising polyol PCM candidate for medium temperature range. PVP with various loadings was dispersed in erythritol to make composites for the proof-of-concept tests. It was shown that the degree of supercooling of erythritol can be reduced significantly from over 64 °C to about 21 °C in the presence of only 1.0 wt.% PVP. Along with the mitigated supercooling effect, the addition of PVP also leads to an increase of the retrievable latent heat during crystallization, from ∼187 J/g to ∼224 J/g at the same minute PVP loading of 1.0 wt.%, by increasing the crystallinity of erythritol. The PVP-loaded erythritol composites exhibit little sacrifice in latent heat of fusion, i.e., only ∼15% loss when the PVP loading reaches 6.0 wt.%. In addition, multiple tests confirmed that PVP can be dissolved in erythritol, thus desirable compatibility was obtained and the composites would have long-term reliability. This proposed additive enables an efficient and cost-effective way for improving the crystallization behaviors of erythritol (and other polyol PCMs) towards real-world applications.