Nanoscale Metal Network Enhanced Phase Change Materials

纳米级金属网络增强相变材料

• 批准号: 1562876
• 负责人: Hongwei Sun
• 金额: $ 39.88万
• 依托单位: University of Massachusetts Lowell
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-06-01 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1562876&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Nanoscale; Metal; Network; Enhanced; Phase

Renewable energy sources such as solar energy, geothermal energy, and wind energy require effective and efficient thermal storage systems. Latent heat storage is an approach which can be accomplished using certain kinds of materials, including those known as Phase Change Materials, which have the ability to store energy at near constant temperature. However, most Phase Change Materials have unacceptably low thermal conductivities, and therefore their applications for high power, transient, and large-scale renewable energy systems are significantly limited. This award supports the study of a manufacturing process to synthesize and embed a nanoscale metallic network into phase change materials, taking advantage of the high thermal conductivity of the metallic network, to significantly improve thermal performance of Phase Change Material-based energy storage systems. This new type of Phase Change Materials would impact the renewable energy storage industry and diverse applications such as flexible electronics, electronic cooling, and smart textiles. The knowledge acquired from this project will also contribute to other industries such as medical, automobile, food processing and semiconductor packaging. The integration of fundamental research together with the educational efforts will advance engineering education and promote this new and exciting field of science at the high school senior and college freshmen levels.The objective of this research is to synthesize and study interrelationship among structures, processing and thermal properties of a novel phase change material embedded with a soldered metallic nanowire network. The major issues in nanoparticle-dispersed phase change materials include the settlement during melting-solidification cycling, and high interfacial thermal resistance of particles. The research is focused on fundamental issues in exploiting the new phase change material, such as soldering of nanowire-to-nanowire, nanowire-to-sidewall surface, and interactions between magnetic field and nanowires in phase change material fluids. A combined approach involving both modeling and theoretical analysis, and well-designed sets of experiments will be adopted to understand the relationships between network structure, processing parameters such as magnetic field strength, nanowire loading, spacing and size of magnetic pads, soldering temperature, and the resulting thermal properties of the new phase change material.

可再生能源（例如太阳能，地热能和风能）需要有效，有效的热存储系统。潜热存储是一种可以使用某些材料（包括称为相变材料的材料）来完成的方法，这些材料具有能够在接近恒定温度下存储能量的能力。但是，大多数相变材料的热导电性低得多，因此它们在高功率，瞬态和大规模可再生能源系统中的应用受到了显着限制。该奖项支持对制造过程的研究，以利用金属网络的高热导率，将纳米级金属网络合成和嵌入相变材料中，以显着提高基于相位变化的基于材料的储能系统的热性能。这种新型的相变材料将影响可再生能源存储行业，并影响柔性电子，电子冷却和智能纺织品等多种应用。从该项目获得的知识还将为医疗，汽车，食品加工和半导体包装等其他行业做出贡献。将基本研究与教育努力的融合将推进工程教育，并在高中高中和大学新生层面上促进这一新的令人兴奋的科学领域。这项研究的目的是综合并研究结构，加工和热性能之间与焊接金属纳米诺维尔网络嵌入的新型相变材料之间的相互关系。纳米颗粒分散相变材料的主要问题包括熔化循环过程中的沉降以及颗粒的高界面热电阻。该研究的重点是利用新相变材料的基本问题，例如纳米线到纳米线的焊接，纳米线对侧壁表面的焊接以及相变材料流体中磁场与纳米线之间的相互作用。将采用涉及建模和理论分析的组合方法，以及设计良好的实验集，以了解网络结构，处理参数之间的关系，例如磁场强度，纳米线强度，纳米线载荷，磁垫的间距和磁垫，焊接温度以及新相变材料的产生性能。