Thermal conductivity enhancement of lauric acid phase change nanocomposite with graphene nanoplatelets

Sivasankaran Harish, Daniel Orejon, Yasuyuki Takata, Masamichi Kohno*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

In this work, we prepared lauric acid based phase change nanocomposites with chemically functionalized graphene nanoplatelets and measured its thermal conductivity using transient hot wire method. We show that inclusion of graphene nanoplatelets increases the thermal conductivity of phase change material by 230% at a loading of 1 vol%. Comparing the experimental results with the model calculations based on the effective medium theory suggests that graphene based nanocomposites outperforms those with carbon nanotubes or metal nanoparticles reported in the literature. High thermal conductivity, high aspect ratio and low thermal interface resistance at the graphene - host matrix interface makes it the most suitable nano filler candidate to enhance the thermal conductivity of low conductive materials. Differential scanning calorimetry study of the nanocomposites show that the phase change enthalpy and the melting temperature remains similar to that of pristine material, which makes graphene a promising candidate for thermal energy storage applications.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)205-211
Number of pages7
JournalApplied Thermal Engineering
Volume80
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 5 Apr 2015

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • Carbon nanotube
  • Graphene
  • Lauric acid
  • Phase change material
  • Thermal conductivity

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