Phase Change Matters

• Coating approach for a Phase Change Material (PCM)  [Powder Technology]

• Thermal performance analysis of combined solar collector with triple concentric-tube latent heat storage systems [Energy and Buildings]

• Nanoencapsulated phase change materials with polymer-SiO2 hybrid shell materials: Compositions, morphologies, and properties [Energy Conversion and Management]

• Investigation on the charging process of a multi-PCM latent heat thermal energy storage unit for use in conventional air-conditioning systems [Energy]

• A review of the application of carbon materials in solar thermal energy storage [Solar Energy]

• Feasibility analysis for enhancement of output power of the PV panels by use of PCM (Phase Change Material) based cooling technique [pdf] [Malaya Journal of Matematik]

• The 2nd symposium on the use of PCM in buildings will take place March 14-15 in Würzburg, Germany. It is part of the demonstration project PCM Demo II. The free event is aimed at specialists and decision makers who would like to get informed about the topic, such as architects, planners, building physicists, energy consultants, municipalities and building cooperatives. Thomas Wollheim of va-Q-tec AG, Thomas Haussmann of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Felix Klinker of ZAE Bayern and Felix Pawelz of Rubitherm are among the scheduled speakers.  

• Outlast Technologies of Golden, Colo., will be among the exhibitors at the International Battery Seminar & Exhibit March 27-29 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

• Outlast is using LinkedIn to showcase Outlast partners and their newest products. First up: Betabrand's Microclimate Office Wrap, a lightweight cardigan-style wrap designed to regulate body temperature "for all-day comfort." 

• The environmental group CDP reports that more than 100 cities worldwide now get the majority of their power (70 percent or more) from renewables. And a study by the International Renewable Energy Agency confirms the potential for increased use of renewable energy in Europe's heating and cooling sector.

• New from Coherent Market Insights: "Chilled Water Storage Systems by Market ... Opportunity Analysis, 2017-2025"

• New from Global Market Insights: "Phase Change Materials Market Size By Product (Paraffin, Non-Paraffin, Salt Hydrates, Eutectics) ... Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2017-2024"

• CIC Energigune, an energy research center in Spain's Basque Country, is looking to fill a post-doctoral position in its Thermal Energy Storage group. The selected candidate will focus on the development of advanced PCMs tailored for TES applications at low to medium temperatures, including solid-solid PCMs, shape-stabilized PCMs and encapsulated PCMs.   

• In an Accenture survey of 360 chemical companies in 12 countries, 80 percent of respondents said they are increasing their investments in digital technologies for plants, in particular plant management and product quality. 

• The final agenda has been released for the ARPA-E Summit in Washington, D.C., March 13-15. U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry is among the speakers. Also on tap: A discussion of "High Power Systems and Thermal Management Challenges in Defense" and a demonstration of an "Additively Manufactured Record High Thermal Conductivity Polymer Composite Heat Exchanger."

• Two Fraunhofer CSE projects, SunDial and Energy Storage Integration Lab, were on display Friday at the MIT Energy Conference Showcase in Cambridge, Mass. SunDial is an energy storage and distribution management system. The ESI Lab simulates a connected home of the future with a range of electric devices, including rooftop solar, energy storage, smart loads and EV charging. 

• Leaving the North American Free Trade Agreement could cost the United States $22 billion in lost chemical exports and create a tariff burden of up to $9 billion, the American Chemistry Council says.

Axiotherm GmbH of Germany has joined the RAL Quality Association PCM, a European-based organization established in 2004 to develop standards for the phase change material industry.

Axiotherm, a subsidiary of ESDA Technologie GmbH, specializes in developing macro-encapsulation of phase change materials for various applications. The company's HeatSel capsule, for example, is designed to increase the capacity of water-based heat and cold storage systems.

Dirk Büttner, Axiotherm's chief research officer, said the European Commission recently recognized HeatSel's market potential.

"Out of 135 applications in the Horizon 2020 SME's energy category, the Hi-ThermCap project proposal was rated with the highest score and thus ranks first among the most innovative ideas in Europe," said Büttner, right. "Within the scope of the project Axiotherm is now also striving for validation by an external testing of their products performed by one of the association’s monitoring institutes, ZAE or ISE."

Croda International, which is working with Axiotherm on thermal energy storage applications, is also a member of the association. Other members are Microtek Laboratories, Rubitherm, EMCO, va-Q-tec, PCM Technology, Global Energy Systems Europe, Sasol, Sunamp Ltd., Pluss Advanced Technologies and Entropy Solutions.

The association held its semiannual meeting in Düsseldorf, Germany, on Thursday. Crystal Air PCM Ltd. was invited as a guest but had to cancel because of severe weather in Ireland. The company will be invited to make a presentation at RAL's next meeting, scheduled for Nov. 15, 2018, in Düsseldorf.

• Reversible thermochromic microencapsulated phase change materials for thermal energy storage application in thermal protective clothing [Applied Energy]

• Micro encapsulated & form-stable phase change materials for high temperature thermal energy storage [Applied Energy]

• Thermal performance of an active-passive ventilation wall with phase change material in solar greenhouses [Applied Energy]

• A novel nanosilica-enhanced phase change material with anti-leakage and anti-volume-changes properties for battery thermal management [Energy Conversion and Management]

• Synthetic Comb-Like Phase-Change Material Poly(Acrylonitrile-co-Lauric Acid) Copolymer for Low Temperature Energy Management [Materials Science Forum]

• Fundamental incorporation of the density change during melting of a confined phase change material [Journal of Applied Physics]

• Preliminary investigation of thermal behaviour of PCM based latent heat thermal energy storage [E3S Web of Conferences]

• A business opportunity at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash: "Acquisition of a thermal energy ice storage system (TESS) that will be integrated with an existing chilled water distribution loop serving one building." Bids are due March 8.

• In a pair of LinkedIn articles, SmartCAE's Stefan Braun shares his company's approach to preparing PCM bricks for cold-chain shipments. "Our recommendation is to precondition PCMs outside the phase change range," he writes. "This way, the PCM bricks are always in a well-defined state, providing their full latent heat rather than some undefined fraction. A repeatable, well-defined preconditioning process is a prerequisite for a robust box design."

• The Maryland Energy Administration is accepting applications for its new Energy Storage Tax Credit Program, which offers up to $750,000 to residential and commercial customers who install qualified systems. "The rules specify that projects can store electrical energy: mechanical and chemical including electrochemical energy, in addition to thermal energy that 'was once electrical energy,' " Utility Dive reports. "The rules also say all storage systems must store energy either for use as electrical energy at a later date or in a process that offsets electricity use at peak times.​"

• Viessmann’s ESyCool Green propane-based heat pump refrigeration system has been awarded the government-backed German Innovation Prize for Climate and Environment. The system includes an ice thermal storage component.

• An Innovative Apparatus for Simulating Daily Temperature for Investigating Thermal Performance of Wallboards Incorporating PCMs [Energy and Buildings]

• Application of Combined Materials for Baby Incubator [Procedia Manufacturing]

• Characterization of desert sand to be used as a high-temperature thermal energy storage medium in particle solar receiver technology [Applied Energy]

• Use of partial load operating conditions for latent thermal energy storage management [Applied Energy]

• Melting phenomenon in a finned thermal storage system with graphene nano-plates for medium temperature applications [Energy Conversion and Management]

• Ca(NO3)2-NaNO3/expanded graphite composite as a novel shape-stable phase change material for mid- to high-temperature thermal energy storage [Energy Conversion and Management]

• Cumulative energy demand and global warming potential of a building-integrated solar thermal system with/without phase change material [Journal of Environmental Management]

• New formulation and characterization of enhanced bulk-organic phase change materials [Energy and Buildings]

• Numerical analysis of the freeze-thaw performance of cementitious composites that contain phase change material (PCM) [Materials & Design]

• Thermal Properties of Lauric Acid Filled in Carbon Nanotubes as Shape-stabilized Phase Change Materials [Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics]

• Thermo-physiological comfort of business clothing incorporating phase change materials in a cold environment [International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology]

• Phase change material thermal energy storage for a large scale ammonia chiller/heat pump system [International Institute of Refrigeration]

• Case Study of Load Shifting Using Thermal Energy Ice Storage in Public Facilities [Journal of Facility Management]

• Microencapsulated phase change materials with composite titania-polyurea (TiO2-PUA) shell [Applied Energy]

• Numerical study on the effects of fins and nanoparticles in a shell and tube phase change thermal energy storage unit [Applied Energy]

• Nearly a year ago, a Whole Foods in Los Altos, Calif., connected a thermal battery system made by Axiom Exergy to the store's refrigeration system. Whole Foods pays Axiom a monthly fee for the saltwater-based technology. Axiom says that payment, coupled with a lower monthly power bill, amounts to less than what the grocer was paying its utility before the batteries were installed. 

• Thermal battery maker EnergyNest AS of Norway is looking to hire a senior engineer to work in its main office outside Oslo.  

• The schedule has been posted for the 2018 GlobalChem Conference & Exhibition in Washington, D.C., Feb. 28-March 2. Most of the sessions focus on the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Global Harmonized System of Classification and other regulatory topics. 

• Applications are being accepted for the Women and Minorities in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Fields Grant Program (WAMS). The program supports research and extension projects that will increase participation by rural women and underrepresented minorities from rural areas in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

• CONTISOL, a solar reactor that can run day or night, is being tested by researchers in Germany. The reactor uses concentrated solar power and thermal energy storage.

• Registration is still open for the second annual European Chemistry Partnering event, to be held Feb. 23 in Frankfurt, Germany. It's a chance to pitch innovations and connect with investors and decision-makers in the chemical industry.

• U.K.-based Sure Chill Co., whose water-based refrigeration technology is used to keep vaccines cool without the need for grid-based electricity, has been shortlisted for a 2018 St. David Award in Innovation, Science and Technology. 

• The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has voted to clear a path for energy storage projects in the capacity, energy and ancillary services markets. Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur noted that newer technologies “like some of the batteries, flywheels, compressed air, new forms of thermal storage, are rapidly gaining commercial viability and scale.”

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a system that uses phase change material and graphene to convert daily fluctuations in ambient temperature into electrical power. 

The system, called a thermal resonator, is described in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

“We basically invented this concept out of whole cloth,” one of the authors, professor Michael Strano, told MIT News. “We’ve built the first thermal resonator. It’s something that can sit on a desk and generate energy out of what seems like nothing. We are surrounded by temperature fluctuations of all different frequencies all of the time. These are an untapped source of energy.”

MIT News writes:

"The researchers realized that to produce power from temperature cycles, they needed a material that is optimized for a little-recognized characteristic called thermal effusivity — a property that describes how readily the material can draw heat from its surroundings or release it. Thermal effusivity combines the properties of thermal conduction (how rapidly heat can propagate through a material) and thermal capacity (how much heat can be stored in a given volume of material). In most materials, if one of these properties is high, the other tends to be low. Ceramics, for example, have high thermal capacity but low conduction.

"To get around this, the team created a carefully tailored combination of materials. The basic structure is a metal foam, made of copper or nickel, which is then coated with a layer of graphene to provide even greater thermal conductivity. Then, the foam is infused with a kind of wax called octadecane, a phase-change material, which changes between solid and liquid within a particular range of temperatures chosen for a given application.

"A sample of the material made to test the concept showed that, simply in response to a 10-degree-Celsius temperature difference between night and day, the tiny sample of material produced 350 millivolts of potential and 1.3 milliwatts of power — enough to power simple, small environmental sensors or communications systems."

The researchers say the system could be used, for example, to continuously power remote sensing systems for years.

http://news.mit.edu/2018/system-draws-power-daily-temperature-swings-0215

Ice Energy, the California company that partnered with NRG Energy a year ago to install up to 1,800 behind-the-meter ice batteries in commercial buildings in Orange County, has bought back the program. Payment terms were not disclosed. In an e-mail interview, Ice Energy CEO Mike Hopkins explained the strategic shift.

Q: What spurred your decision to buy back the program?

A: NRG was the owner of the program but they decided to divest all their renewables including this project. We bought the project back from NRG last month and are financing it ourselves. We have almost 1800 Ice Bears available but are in discussions with several major property owners who will start taking down large chunks.

Q: The agreement with NRG called for the installation of up to 1,800 Ice Bear 30s, providing a total of up to 25.6 MW of peak storage capacity to Southern California Edison under 20-year power purchase agreements. How long was the NRG program active, and how many Ice Bears were installed?

A: During most of the time NRG owned the program, it was on hold due to regulatory delays. The delays were caused by requests for re-hearings and court appeals unrelated to our program, which was part of a much larger procurement by SCE that included a controversial gas peaker. The program got the regulatory green light last March, but that more or less coincided with NRG’s move out of renewables, which effectively kept the program on hold. As a result, only a few units for the City of Tustin were installed.

Q: Can you share performance data on the Ice Bears installed through the NRG agreement?

A: The Ice Bears installed for the City of Tustin have performed like the other 1200 or so units in operation – better than 98% availability which is better than any other storage technology, or grid asset for that matter.

Q: Can you name commercial property owners that participated in the Ice Bear program through NRG?

A: In addition to the City of Tustin who had their Ice Bears installed during NRG’s ownership of the program, the following commercial property owners signed up during NRG’s ownership and will now have their Ice Bears installed by us:

• A global bank
• John Wayne Airport
• Marconi Auto Museum
• Medical Eye Services
• 7 Diamonds

Q: Can you name any of the major property owners you're now in talks with?

A: We're in ongoing discussions and identifying initial target sites with the largest Orange County real estate developers and property management firms.

Q: Will the program change in any significant way under Ice Energy's direction?

A: Yes, under Ice Energy's direction we're able to respond more quickly and tailor our offering to meet individual customer needs. To accelerate adoption, for a limited period of time, Ice Energy is offering new participants free HVAC replacement in addition to free Ice Bears. We are also now able to work more efficiently with our utility partner on this program through our direct interaction. The end result of these changes is more units placed more quickly to more customers.

Q: When will the first units be installed?

A: The first installations under our ownership of the program will be next month which will be the beginning of almost three years of installing Ice Bears under our program. Once installed, the Ice Bears will then provide OC participants 20 years of utility bill savings and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.