Synthesis and properties of microencapsulated phase change materials for thermal energy storage materials

This work presents and discusses the microencapsulation of pentadecane in polystyrene shell as thermal energy storage materials. The emulsion polymerisation method was used for the microencapsulation process. Styrene (S) was used as monomer to obtain polystyrene (PS) and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate was used as crosslinking agents. The influence of the core: shell mass ratio on the encapsulation process and the physical properties of the resulting microcapsules have been studied. The surface morphologies of the microencapsulated phase change materials (microPCMs) were studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and the thermal properties of the MicroPCMs were investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). SEM photographs showed that these microPCMs have relatively spherical profiles with diameter ranging from 10 to 80 mu m. It was determined that, the phase change enthalpies of melting and freezing were about 83.2 J/g and 81.8 J/g, respectively. The results show that pentadecane was microencapsulated successfully and its properties very suitable for thermal energy storage applications