Experimental Investigation of the Apparent Thermal Conductivity of Microencapsulated Phase-Change-Material Slurry at the Phase-Transition Temperature

The article presents the results of detailed studies of the thermal conductivity of the water slurry of microencapsulated PCM (mPCM) and slurry based on water–propylene glycol solutions. The starting product, MICRONAL(®) 5428 X, which contains about 43% microencapsulated paraffin with a transformation temperature of 28 °C, was mixed with the base liquid to obtain slurries with mass fractions of mPCM of 4.3, 8.6, 12.9, 17.2, 21.5, 25.8, 30.1, 34.4, 38.7, and 43.0%. Detailed measurements were carried out in the temperature range of 10–40 °C. It was found that: (a) an increase in the temperature of the slurry caused an increase in its thermal conductivity, both when PCM was in the form of a solid and a liquid; (b) the thermal conductivity of the mPCM slurry when the PCM was in liquid form was greater than the thermal conductivity of the slurry when the PCM was liquid; (c) during the phase transformation, a significant increase in the thermal conductivity of the slurry was observed, and its peak occurred when the temperature of the slurry reached the temperature declared by the manufacturer at which the phase-transition peak occurs.