PCM Products and their Fields of Application - an Overview of the State in 2020/2021

Phase Change Materials, or briefly PCM, are a promising option for thermal energy storage, depending on the application also called heat and cold storage. Systematic investigations of PCM already started after the oil crises, and then in the late 1990s R&D on PCM intensified significantly. While there is still a large demand for R&D from basics to applications in many areas, this is not the case in general. This overview shows that PCM are already applied in a wide variety of commercial products, in many fields of application, in some at an early stage, but in others already as the standard. Some commercial products even exist already for many years, and not just in some niche application. Examples are applications in buildings, for logistics, specifically the cold chain, the human body etc. This overview shows that PCM are used in many commercial applications already, and in many fields. It thereby demonstrates their enormous potential, also in applications still needing significant R&D.