Ben Welter - Wednesday, November 19, 2014
MicroMarket Monitor is projecting that Europe's biobased advanced phase change material market will reach $46.4 million in four years. "The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 30.5% from 2013 to 2018," according to the report, scheduled for release Dec. 8. MicroMarket attributes the growth to demand for eco-friendly HVAC applications and "cost-effective prices" of biobased PCMs.
Ben Welter - Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Former University of Maryland star Ekene Ibekwe is playing pro basketball in New Zealand, where he is touting Sleepyhead's Sanctuary bed. Phase change material is used to "absorb and distribute excess heat from around the body and dissipate it down through the mattress." "I’ve definitely noticed a difference since switching to Sanctuary,” says Ibekwe, a 6-9 forward who has also played professionally in Israel, France, Turkey, Iran, Spain, Germany and Puerto Rico. "I was after a firmer bed and now my aches and pains have disappeared!”
Ben Welter - Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Phase Change Energy Solutions' BioPCM is being used in the upstairs walls of a house in Victoria, Australia. “Everything is effectively the same as a reverse brick veneer system," said Jeremy Spencer, director of the Melbourne firm that designed the house. "But instead of bricks we have the phase change material that sits inside the cavity and behind plasterboard internal wall." The project is profiled in InfoLink, "Australia's Architecture, Building, Construction and Design Directory."
Ben Welter - Tuesday, November 18, 2014
"The Embrace warmer has now saved over 100,000 infants across nine countries," Jane Chen tells Forbes magazine. "We’ve gotten support from Beyoncé, who made a gift in the amount of $125,000 to Millenium Promise to bring Embrace infant warmers to 100 rural health facilities in sub-Saharan Africa. Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, recently made an investment into Embrace Innovations, our for-profit social enterprise arm."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/deniserestauri/2014/11/18/a-personal-story-how-low-cost-technology-is-saving-babies-lives/
Ben Welter - Saturday, November 15, 2014
EGO’s new line of cordless electric lawn mowers, hedge cutters and chain saws is powered by a 4.0Ah lithium ion battery surrounded by phase change material that helps dissipate heat. The battery provides up to 45 minutes of mowing and recharges in 30 minutes, the company said.
Ben Welter - Friday, November 14, 2014
Outlast Technologies’ new Universe climate-control material is designed for use in bedding and apparel. The material is a combination of 70 percent down and 70 PCM-laden viscose fibers. Thicker fibers carry a greater amount of phase change material. “The performance compared to a standard PCM viscose fibre here is four times higher,” says Martin Bentz, managing director of Outlast Europe.
Ben Welter - Wednesday, November 12, 2014
CALMAC has launched a new app that can calculate the impact of thermal energy storage in commercial building projects. Available for free on all
Apple and
Android smart devices, the app allows engineers to simulate the effect of ice-based thermal energy storage installations on demand.
Ben Welter - Friday, November 07, 2014
"Thermal Energy Storage Technologies for Sustainability," a new book by S. Kalaiselvam and R. Parameshwaran of
Anna University in Chennai, India, details the latest thinking on latent, sensible and thermo-chemical energy storage systems and their applications across industries. The authors discuss the use of phase change materials and provide case studies of several systems in use. Published by Academic Press in August 2014.
Ben Welter - Thursday, November 06, 2014
Ice Energy has been awarded sixteen contracts from Southern California Edison to provide 25.6 megawatts of
behind-the-meter thermal energy storage using Ice Energy’s Ice Bear system. The TES system attaches to one or more standard 5- to 20-ton commercial AC units. The system makes ice at night when demand for electricity is low and capacity is abundant and increasingly sourced from wind and other renewables. During the day, the stored ice is used to provide cooling.
Ben Welter - Thursday, November 06, 2014
Think you know how phase change works? You might need to rethink that. Researchers at Princeton, Peking University and New York University say the process is a lot more complex than previously known. "This research shows that phase changes can follow multiple pathways, which is counter to what we've previously known," explains Mark Tuckerman, a professor of chemistry and applied mathematics at NYU and one of the study's co-authors. "This means the simple theories about phase transitions that we teach in classes are just not right."
