Experimental thermal degradation analysis of pentaerythritol with alumina nano additives for thermal energy storage application

摘要

The present work investigates the effect of addition of Al2O3 nanoparticles on thermal degradation kinetics of pentaerythritol (PE), a solid-solid phase change material, using a Thermogravimetry analyzer. For this TGA experiments were conducted using PE added 0.1% and 1% weight fractions of Al2O3 nanoparticles at heating rates of 5 degrees C/min, 10 degrees C/min, 20 degrees C/min, 40 degrees C/min under non-isothermal conditions. This paper presents the application of isoconversional (model free) method Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose (KAS) for estimation of activation energy of the samples from the non-isothermal TGA data. The average activation energy of PE, PE + 0.1% Al2O3 and, PE + 1% Al2O3 were found to be 123, 116, & 98 kJ/mol respectively. It was understood from the kinetic analysis that the addition of Al2O3 nanoparticles resulted in lowering the activation energy of pentaerythritol.