Thermal energy storage (TES) materials rapidly absorb and release heat to improve efficiency and to prevent devices or components from overheating and failing. Key challenges are demonstrating high energy storage density and high cooling power densities in stable, reversible systems. We have demonstrated:
- Eutectic PCMs for bespoke thermal storage media.
- Strategies and tools for optimal design of high cooling-power thermal composites.
- Material-specific nucleation catalysts, resulting in significant decrease in subcooling in multiple classes of PCMs.
- Thermophysical properties of advanced phase change materials and composites.
- Figure of merit based approaches to directly compare the performance of different materials and optimized composites.
Applications: Buildings, Electronics, Aviation/Automotive, Batteries, Oil & Gas, Appliances
Projects:
- Dynamically Tunable Thermal Energy Storage Materials
- Thermal Energy Storage for Building Efficiency
- Transient Thermal Management for Electric Machines
- Design of Composite Phase Change Materials
- Nucleation in Reversible Phase Transformations