A novel honeycomb-like porous carbon from loofah sponge for form-stable phase change materials with high encapsulation capacity and reliability

Form-stable composite phase change materials (PCM) with high encapsulation capacity and reliability composed of paraffin and honeycomb-like porous carbons are developed. Porous carbons from natural loofah sponge were carbonized under different temperatures with rich honeycomb-like pores about 10 mu m in diameter and used as supporting framework to load paraffin whose maximum loading rate is up to 545.58 w.t.% and the enthalpy is up to 146.10 J/g. The samples can keep pristine macron morphology without obvious leakage after heating. The composite PCMs have many advantages such as inexpensive porous fiber keeping a certain degree of mechanical prosperity used as supporting materials and good thermal storage capacity.