Thermophysical Properties and Thermal Stability of Different Sugar Alcohols as Phase Change Materials: a Comprehensive Review

摘要

Sugar alcohols (SA) are considered to be very promising phase change materials for low to mediumtemperature (80-250 °C) thermal energy storage applications. There is a growing interest in their usage in thiskind of applications as they are non-toxic and non-flammable. This paper presents a literature review of themain thermophysical properties for four pure polyalcohol sugars (erythritol, mannitol, inositol and dulcitol).The thermal stability of pure substances is also analyzed to understand their behavior over thermal cycles andto quantify their deterioration in terms of thermal performance (latent heat exchanged and phase changetemperatures). In addition, the latent heat and the melting and crystallization temperatures of the puresubstances are measured by means of a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). A direct comparison betweenthe data obtained from the experimental campaign with the DSC and those collected from the literature is alsopresented.