Experimental characterization of promising phase change materials for solar cooling applications

Solar cooling represents an innovative technology consisting of a common solar thermal system made up of solar collectors, a storage tank, a control unit and a thermally driven cooling machine. The thermal storage tank, acts as a buffer and enables the optimization of the asynchronous heat absorption during the hours of solar radiation and the cooling, making this component indispensable. Despite the good level of development, this technology is still affected by some technical and economic issues. Among them, the needs to efficiently store the surplus of thermal energy produced by the solar thermal collector. Accordingly, phase change materials (PCMs) can be considered a promising way to reduce the overall volume of the system, making this technology even more attractive for the market [1]. In such a context, the aim of the present paper is the experimental characterization of the most attractive commercial as well as not commercial PCM operating in the temperature range between 80°C and 100°C, perfectly suitable for non-concentrating solar cooling systems.