Abstract:

This presentation provides a brief overview of materials for thermal energy storage (TES) applications, covering extensively studied materials as well as emerging ones. It focuses on materials with phase change below 200°C because the corresponding TES applications have greater market potential than those at higher temperatures. The fundamentals of materials for TES, their classification and the criteria generally adopted for selecting them are briefly recalled. Extensively investigated materials are shortly introduced, including a discussion about their respective advantages and drawbacks. Emerging materials offering attractive prospects for TES cost reduction are presented as well. This encompasses new renewable-based materials, materials with high volumetric energy density values and solid-solid PCMs and reactive systems. An overview of composite materials developments directed to improve the materials performance or/and promoting their easy handling and integration into the applications is also given. The commercial status of TES materials and future development directions in the field are discussed last.

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Professor Elena Palomo received his PhD on Applied Physics from the University of Complutense de Madrid in1992. She has spent various research periods at the CIEMAT (Madrid, SP), as well as at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussés (Paris, FR) In 2001, she became Full Professor at Department of Physics of the University of Bordeaux. In 2017, she was appointed Scientific Director at the research center CIC-Energigune dependent on the Basque Government. Currently, CIC-Energigune is one of the European centers with the highest scientific productivity in the field of energy storage and with a clear orientation toward the impact on the competitiveness of the Basque industry.