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a new chemical composite developed by researchers at MIT could provide an alternative. It could be used to store heat from the sun or any other source during the day in a kind of thermal battery, and it could release the heat when needed, for example for cooking or heating after dark.
A common approach to thermal storage is to use what is known as a phase change material (PCM), where input heat melts the material and its phase change -- from solid to liquid -- stores energy. When the PCM is cooled back down below its melting point, it turns back into a solid, at which point the stored energy is released as heat. There are many examples of these materials, including waxes or fatty acids used for low-temperature applications, and molten salts used at high temperatures. But all current PCMs require a great deal of insulation, and they pass through that phase change temperature uncontrollably, losing their stored heat relatively rapidly.
Instead, the new system uses molecular switches that change shape in response to light; when integrated into the PCM, the phase-change temperature of the hybrid material can be adjusted with light, allowing the thermal energy of the phase change to be maintained even well below the melting point of the original material.
The rate of cooling can be controlled.
Grace G. D. Han, Huashan Li, Jeffrey C. Grossman. Optically-controlled long-term storage and release of thermal energy in phase-change materials. Nature Communications, 2017; 8 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01608-y
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 22 2017, @04:46PM
If they can keep the liquid state with some low-energy LED lighting, control is getting pretty good - and convenient: turn the heat-hold lights on at dusk, then switch them off later in the evening as it starts getting cooler inside.
What I want is something that "holds cold" around 50-60F that you can switch to heat sucking mode at will, perhaps around 3pm when the afternoon heat starts baking through the insulation. Then, the next night, reject that heat back to the atmosphere, or possibly groundwater say, from a drinking well. And it needs to last forever, cost nothing, and look good while performing its function. Or, at least outperform conventional freon based A/C systems on those parameters.
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