Nanosilver modified navel orange peel foam/polyethylene glycol composite phase change materials with improved thermal conductivity and photo-thermal conversion efficiency

Porous carbon-based composite phase change materials (CPCMs) have received widespread attention from researchers for their stable shape and considerable latent heat storage capacity. Here, using navel orange peel-based porous carbon (BPC) as the support carrier, nano-Ag as the surface modification material and polyethylene glycol (PEG) for the phase change medium, a novel PEG/BPC-Ag (Ag@CPCM) was fabricated by vacuum impregnation. Surprisingly, the experimental results indicated that nano-Ag modified the BPC could make the Ag@CPCM have stronger photo-thermal conversion ability, higher thermal conductivity and better thermal reliability. Significantly, the addition of nano-Ag increased the thermal conductivity of navel orange peel-based CPCMs to 0.639 W/m K (Ag@CPCM) from 0.313 W/m K (PEG/BPC), and its relative enthalpy efficiency η raised to 107.2 % from 104.8 %, and its photo-thermal conversion efficiency θ increased to 94.7 % from 77.2 %. Furthermore, the prepared novel CPCMs maintained its original phase change properties after 100 thermal cycles of testing, which demonstrated that the prepared CPCMs possessed favorable thermal stability and reusability . Overall, the Ag@CPCM materials have great potential for applications such as thermal management and solar energy storage.