Polypropylene/Polyethylene (PP/PE) alloy as a phase change material for energy storage in a solar cooker

Résumé

As part of the continuation of our research work, we focused on the choice of phase change material (PCM). We chose polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE). This choice is justified through a number of properties. Firstly PP is a semi-crystalline thermoplastic polymer of high consumption whose phase change temperature changes from 160 ° C to 170 ° C for the commercial grade. It has several advantages among other it is food (odorless and non-toxic) and recyclable. As for PE, it is one of the simplest and cheapest polymers and its phase change temperature ranges from 85 ° C to 140 ° C. We have constructed the solidification diagram to determine the phase change temperature of the PP / PE mixture. One of the most important PCM requirements is stability after a number of repeated fusion / solidification cycles. PCM should have the same or nearly the same thermal, chemical, and physical properties after repeated cycles. Once the composition has been identified, a thermal stability test is carried out to study the evolution of the temperature as a function of the heating cycle. We observe that the temperature evolves very little, which allows us to affirm the stability of the composition