Effects of some nucleating agents on the supercooling of erythritol to be applied as phase change material

• DOI: 10.1007/s10973-017-6296-2
• Publication Date: 2017-03-20T04:08:37Z
• Authors: Ju-Lan Zeng; Lei Zhou; Yue-Fei Zhang; Sai-Ling Sun; Yu-Hang Chen; Li Shu; Lin-Ping Yu; Ling Zhu; Liu-Bin Song; Zhong Cao
• Keywords: Erythritol; Supercooling

Nine nucleating agents, calcium pimelate (CaPi), bicyclic [1, 2, 2]heptane di-carboxylate (HPN-68), a commercially obtained aryl amide nucleating agent (TMB-5), calcium salt of hexahydrophthalic acid (HPN-20E), 1,3:2,4-di-p-methylbenzylidene sorbitol (MDBS) and sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium salt of benzene-1, 3, 5-tricarboxylic acid (Na3BTC, K3BTC, Mg3BTC2 and Ca3BTC2, respectively), were applied to reduce the supercooling of erythritol, and their effects were investigated by cyclic differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The results revealed that Na3BTC and K3BTC could not induce erythritol to crystallize under the experiment condition. MDBS could only make erythritol to crystallize at a temperature slightly higher than that of pure erythritol, and the effect was unstable. Mg3BTC2, Ca3BTC2 and HPN-68 could induce erythritol to crystallize at relatively high temperature, but the peak temperature of crystallizing (T p, cr) and the phase change enthalpy of crystallizing (Δcr H) decreased greatly as the melting–crystallizing cycles increased. HPN-20E-doped erythritol crystallized at a high temperature with the T p, cr of 69.3 °C at the first cycle, but the T p, cr and Δcr H varied greatly during the melting–crystallizing cycles. CaPi and TMB-5 could induce erythritol to crystallize at a stable temperature with the T p, cr of about 69 °C and 64 °C, respectively, and with a stable Δcr H of about 204 and 185 J g−1, respectively, in all melting–crystallizing cycles. Hence, CaPi- and TMB-5-doped erythritol could be used as PCMs and applied in thermal energy storage in which the energy was absorbed at a high temperature and released at a lower but stable temperature.