Experimental study of thermal performance on the adsorption of stearic acid into different morphology sepiolite

The different MSEP/SA composite phase change materials were prepared by direct impregnation method with SEP-v, SEP-p, SEP-f as supporting material. The thermal stability of the composite phase change materials was analyzed and the differences in the thermal properties and thermal reliability were compared, and provided reference for the study of different SEP to adsorb stearic acid (SA). The results indicated that there is no chemical reaction during the preparation of the composite PCMs. SEP-f has great advantages as a supporting material and its composite (65SEP-f/SA) has a good leak-proof performance with remaining mass ratio is above 99% for leakage test of 50 h. Besides, melting and freezing latent heat of three composite PCMs are similar, For 65SEP-f/SA, the melting latent heat is 76.10 J g−1 corresponds to the phase change temperature of 344.15 K and the freezing latent heat is 75.59 J g−1 corresponds to the phase change temperature of 336.85 K. The 65SEP-f/SA has the highest thermal conductivity of 0.9460 W m−1 K−1. It can be conducted that 65SEP-f/SA have great application potential in the field for low temperature phase change energy storage.