Enhancing Thermal Conductivity and Photo-Driven Thermal Energy Charging/Discharging Rate of Annealed CMK-3 Based Phase Change Material

In this work, the CMK-3 is successfully prepared with SBA-15 as the template and first annealed to 2000 °C to improve thermal conductivity. The annealed CMK-3 has a thermal conductivity of 6.981 W m(−1) K(−1) higher than un-annealed CMK-3. The annealed CMK-3 is used to encapsulate the RT44HC, and RT44HC/annealed CMK-3 has 10-fold of thermal conductivity and enhanced thermal stability than RT44HC. The RT44HC/annealed CMK-3 has a large melting enthalpy of 177.8 J g(−1) and good thermal stability. The RT44HC/annealed CMK-3 has optical absorptive coefficient of visible range of solar spectrum, which identify seven-fold higher than RT44HC. The RT44HC/annealed CMK-3 has great photo-thermal performance, and the photo-driven energy charging and discharging rate of RT44HC/annealed CMK-3 is almost 30-fold larger than the RT44HC. The results show that the annealed CMK-3 is a great mesoporous carbon nanomaterial for phase change materials and the annealed CMK-3 based phase change material has great potential in solar thermal utilizations such as solar water heating system and solar heating building systems.