Development of thermal insulation materials with granular phase change composite

Abstract

Expanded perlite is a porous, lightweight material with good thermal insulation properties. Construction materials made of expanded perlite are frequently used in modern buildings for thermal insulation. However, they do not always present sufficient thermal inertia. A solution to increase this inertia is to incorporate a phase change material to make a granular phase change composite. Granular phase change composites are made of granular porous materials and phase change materials by means of vacuum impregnation method. In this study, panels have been made by incorporating phase change composites. Experimental studies have been carried out by measuring temperatures through the panels. The thermal performance of panels subjected to temperature variation is presented in this paper. Experimental results show that incorporation of phase change composites allows the apparent heat capacity to be increased and thus thermal insulation becomes more effective.