Abstract
The development of improved means of thermal storage is an aspect of energy conservation which has lagged other advances in this field. The intent of the present work is address this need. To that end? Concrete building materials were selected as ideal candidates for improvement in respect to their thermal storage capacity/ This was achieved by the incorporation of organic change materials (PCM’s) in concrete. These PCM;s absorb or release the latent heat of fusion at a selected te,perature and thereby greatly enhance the heat storage capacity of impegnated concrete over a small temperature range. Relevant properties of the constituent materials, means of their combination, stability and conditions of operation were studied for the purpose of optimizing thermal storage performance and reduce the cost of PCM concrete. Various manufacturing procedures were also developed. Two types of PCM’s were found to be satisfactory.
