Evaluation of thermophysical characteristics on shape-stabilized paraffin as a solid-liquid phase change material

This report deals with thermophysical properties and measuring methods of shape-stabilized paraffin as a new type of latent heat storage material, which keeps the same shape in a solid state when the paraffin melts. Therefore, this type paraffin can be used in a latent heat storage system without encapsulation. A transient hot wire method, a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC), a water calorimeter and a volume expansion meter, which were developed in the present study, were used to measure effective thermal conductivity, latent heat, specific heat and density of the shape-stabilized paraffin, respectively. From the obtained data, useful correlation equations of the above-mentioned thermophysical properties of the shape-stabilized paraffin were expressed as functions of physical property and mass fraction of each constituent of the shape-stabilized paraffin.