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PATENTS
Food/beverage container with thermal control
U.S. patent application 20160215194 (applicant Trent University, Canada):
“A container for a food and/or beverages is provided. The container is designed such that it may have the capability of absorbing excess thermal energy from the food or beverage, thereby cooling the consumable material to a desired temperature and maintaining the material at the desired temperature for a considerable period of time. The container typically includes an outer insulating shell; an inner heat conducting liner and a phase change material (PCM). To facilitate heat transfer to and from a food or beverage stored in the container, the PCM is commonly disposed between the outer insulating shell and the inner heat conducting liner and positioned in thermal contact with the inner heat conducting liner. The PCM may include a diol diester having a melting point of about 30 to 90° C.”
Other recent Trent University applications:
• Latent heat storage using renewable phase change materials
• Compressed gas energy storage system
Charge air cooler and associated charge air circuit
U.S. patent application 20160216037 (applicant Valeo Systemes Thermiques, France):
“The present invention relates to a charge air cooler (7) intended to be placed upstream from the combustion cylinder, said charge air coming from at least one turbocharger and intended to be supplied to the combustion cylinders of an internal combustion engine, said charge air cooler comprising one inlet container (70) for charge air, one outlet container for charge air and heat-exchange surfaces (72) between the charge air and a second heat-transfer fluid, at least the inlet container and/or the outlet container for charge air comprising a phase change material (15).”
IN BRIEF
• Industrial refrigeration company Rockwell Industries of Hyderabad plans to open a network of brand stores across India. Rockwell’s products include a line of eutectic freezers designed to retain subzero temperatures for up to 16 hours in the event of a power loss.
• In partnership with CoolPack.com, Cold Chain Technologies of Holliston, Mass., is conducting an industrywide survey “to benchmark the methods used to maintain the efficacy of temperature sensitive therapeutics throughout the supply chain.” Survey results will be published in October.
• BASF, with chemical sales of $63.7 billion in 2015, is No. 1 on C&EN‘s latest Global Top 50 list. The magazine reports that the 50 companies combined for $775.2 billion in sales last year, a 10.8 percent decline from a year earlier.
• Pelican BioThermal, the temperature-controlled packaging specialist, has added offices in South Korea and Germany to support growth in Asia and Europe.
• Daniel Frey, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, has been appointed the new faculty director of the school’s D-Lab. The lab’s mission is to give students a hands-on opportunity to design and share affordable and effective technologies to address problems in developing countries. A vaccine cooler that incorporates phase change material is among the projects Frey has worked on with students.
• New from Market Research Future: Soy-Based Chemicals Market Research Report Forecast to 2027
• New from QY Research: Global Green Building Materials Industry 2016 Market Research Report
• New from Future Market Insights: Temperature Controlled Packaging Solutions Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2015-2025
• Membership in ASHRAE has topped 56,000, the highest number in 14 years. The international organization focuses on energy efficiency, air quality, refrigeration and sustainability in the built environment. It has members in 130 countries.
• A group representing manufacturers of refrigeration and air conditioning equipment is pushing the European Union to set tougher energy-efficiency targets. The European Alliance to Save Energy argues that doubling the EU’s current annual rate of energy productivity of around 1.5 percent would sharply reduce household energy bills, increase GDP and create more than a million jobs.
RESEARCH ROUNDUP
For our full list of recent academic research, see puretemp.com/academic. Here are highlights from the past week:
From Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews:• Energy storage in the energy transition context: A technology review
From Applied Thermal Engineering:
• Solidification of a PCM with Nanoparticles in Triplex-Tube Thermal Energy Storage System
• Numerical simulation of the heat transfer characteristics of a U-shaped thermosyphon containing a PCM suspension
From Heat and Mass Transfer:
• Performance enhancement of fin attached ice-on-coil type thermal storage tank for different fin orientations using constrained and unconstrained simulations
From IEEE Intersociety Conference on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems:
• Thermal property investigation of multi walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) embedded Phase Change Materials (PCMs)
• Low-grade heat collection from a latent heat thermal energy storage unit
• Experimental and computational evaluation of phase change materials for handheld computing
• Experimental investigation of transient thermal response of phase change material embedded by graphene nanoparticles in energy storage module
From Numerical Heat Transfer, Part A: Applications: An International Journal of Computation and Methodology:
• Numerical study on the melting thermal characteristics of a microencapsulated phase change plate
From Alexandria Engineering Journal:
• Response surface method optimization of V-shaped fin assisted latent heat thermal energy storage system during discharging process
From 14th International Energy Conversion Engineering Conference, Propulsion and Energy Forum:
• Novel Multiphase Change Materials for Energy Storage Application in Buildings
From Renewable Energy:
• MSWI bottom ash for thermal energy storage: An innovative and sustainable approach for its reutilization
NETWORKING
Connect with PCM experts and industry leaders on LinkedIn
More than 800 of your peers have joined a LinkedIn group devoted to the discussion of phase change material and thermal energy storage. The Phase Change Matters group is an interactive complement to the award-winning blog and newsletter of the same name.
You are invited to join the group and connect with PCM and TES experts from around the world. New members this week include Iftekhar Ahmed, design team manager at Sonoco ThermoSafe; Amy Shortman of ASC Associates Ltd., United Kingdom; Suren Dharan, an engineering student at Velammal Institute of Technology, India, and Michael Tessier, an associate at Northwater Capital, Canada.
Michael’s research on the use of PCMs in compressed air energy storage systems was published this month in the journal Energy. The novel design described in the paper is predicted to achieve efficiencies of storage and recovery as high as 85 percent, a 15 percent increase over current designs that do not incorporate PCMs.