Phase Change Materials – an innovation
Phase Change Materials, or PCM in short, are materials used for heat and cold storage systems.
The best known example is water, having its phase change from solid to liquid at a temperature of 0 °C that has been used as cold storage and for cooling food in the form of ice and snow for centuries.
Since the 1980s, a multitude of new PCM covering a broad range of melting temperatures has been developed. Today they are commercially used for storing heat and cold in buildings and for stabilizing the temperature in many different transport boxes or clothing for example.
With the increasing commercial relevance of this technology, quality assurance has become a more and more important issue too. This is why several internationally active enterprises founded the Quality Association PCM in 2004 to develop proper quality assurance procedures. The Bayerisches Zentrum für Angewandte Energieforschung e.V. (ZAE Bayern) and the Fraunhofer-Institut für Solare Energiesysteme ISE were entrusted with this task.
The objective is to guarantee the quality of the storage material as well as objects containing such storage materials. The fundamental quality criteria are the stored heat as a function of temperature, the number of possible repetitions without any adverse effects and the thermal conductivity of the storage materials which is important for the charge and discharge time.