Thermal properties and behavior of microencapsulated sugarcane wax phase change material

In this study, a micro-encapsulated phase change material (PCM) was composed of sugarcane wax-Al₂O₃composite as the core material and gelatin-gum Arabic as the polymer shell materials prepared by complex coacervation. The thermal behavior of solar panels integrated with this encapsulated PCM (EPCM) was investigated. The heat storage-dissipation performance and thermal stability of the sugarcane wax-based composite PCM layer with the heat capacity of 2.86 J/g·°C was influenced by its thickness. Increasing the composite PCM layer thickness from 4 mm to 7 mm could lower the module's front-facing glass temperature by 4% resulting in enhanced the photovoltaic power generation by 12% at the peak, because of the temperature storage ability of the composite PCM. Moreover, the thermal conductivity of the microencapsulated sugarcane wax was calculated using a steady-state one-dimensional energy balance equation. The thermal conductivities estimated across the composite PCM layer depth were found to be temperature dependent. A nonlinear regression of the power law thermal conductivity model gave a good agreement with the observed EPCM-surface temperatures.