Synthesis of Nanoencapsulated Phase Change Materials with Ag Shell for Thermal Energy Storage

Encapsulated phase change materials have been widely applied in energy-saving and energy-efficient process, while poor thermal conductivity of shell materials is the key problem needed to be solved for micro/nanocapsules to satisfy the requirement of fast temperature response in some fields. In this study, a chemical reduction method was proposed to prepare nanocapsules with lauric acid (LA) as core and silver as shell which can improve the heat transfer performance. The results show that the thermal storage capability of the nanocapsules reached 95.29 J/g and the encapsulation ratio was 67.21%. Furthermore, the enthalpy loss of melting and freezing was negligible after 2000 cycles, indicating its good thermal reliabilities. Most importantly, the thermal conductivity enhancement of the nanocapsules can be as high as 333% to that of pure LA. Owing to these excellent properties, the nanocapsules are promising for thermal energy storage and thermo-regulation applications.