Thermal physical properties and key influence factors of phase change emulsion

Latent functionally thermal fluids (LFTF) are a novel kind of heat storage and heat transfer fluids that include phase change microcapsule slurry and phase change emulsion (PCE). They have much greater apparent specific heats and higher heat transfer abilities in the phase change temperature range than conventional single-phase heat transfer fluids such as water. Thus they are advantageous in the field of the convective heat transfer enhancement and energy transport. In this paper, some thermal physical properties such as viscosity, fusion heat and apparent specific heat (c(p)) are measured, and the influences of some factors (such as selection of surfactants, preparation method, temperature, mixing ratio of surfactants and mass concentration of phase change material) on them are discussed. The study shows that: 1) the viscosity of the PCE prepared in the present work is lower than that reported in the literature; 2) its apparent specific heat value for the phase change temperature region is high and proportionally increases with the concentration of phase change material.