Phase Change Materials—Applications and Systems Designs: A Literature Review

Abstract

The development of Phase Change Materials (PCMs) applications and products is closely related to the market penetration of the renewable energy technologies. With the initial aim of matching the phase shift between resource availability and demand in solar energy systems, the range of PCM applications expanded rapidly during the last decades, entering economic sectors where some form of passive thermal regulation was required. This review focuses on examining both conventional applications and recent advances and niche areas—such as space applications—where PCM-based systems demonstrated a potential to improve the operation at process level. The literature survey conducted here gave special attention to recent application of PCM-based systems such as data centres cooling and electric vehicles battery thermal management. Recent advances in PCM-based systems designs were surveyed in the second part of the article. The main PCM containment and system integration directions were discussed and recent representative studies were discussed. Some topics considered marginal but nevertheless essential to large scale implementation of PCM-based systems were mentioned and their coverage in the literature was assessed: health risks, environmental and lifecycle issues.