Phase Change Materials in Buildings - State of the art

For years, latent heat storage systems have been researched with the aim of being able to air-condition buildings more energy-efficiently or to improve user comfort without active air conditioning. The integration of phase change material (PCM) in applications always requires encapsulation. In such applications, PCMs can provide a temporal decoupling of demand from generation by means of peak shifting. The use of PCMs as thermal mass is discussed and it is obvious that PCMs used in the building sector should have melting and crystallization temperatures in the temperature range in which buildings are operated. Encapsulations should be strong enough to withstand mechanical and thermal stress and they should be resistant to corrosion and other interaction with the PCM and the surrounding. The chapter presents some exemplary applications which, however, can only represent a fraction of the possibilities. Material characterization of PCM is described in the quality and testing specifications of the RAL Quality Association PCM.