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MARKET RESEARCH
Microencapsulation market expected to top $8.7 billion by 2020
The global microencapsulation market is expected to reach $8.73 billion by 2020, according to the latest Grand View Research report. That’s a compound annual growth rate of nearly 11 percent between 2014 and 2020. Growing demand for phase change materials in HVAC and construction applications is seen as fueling some of the growth in the microencapsulation market.
INNOVATION
PC heat generation: ‘We can put this in every house in the U.S.’
In an interview with Public Radio International, Project Exergy founder Lawrence Orsini talks about his vision of harnessing the heat generated by computers.
Henry, the project’s liquid-cooled, high-performance prototype, generates far more heat than a typical computer. It’s made from off-the-shelf parts and is slight bigger than a tower PC. The main difference: It’s paired with a small thermal storage tank filled with phase change material. The tank can hold a temperature of 93º Celsius.
“We can put this [technology] in every house in the U.S.,” Orsini says. “In fact, if we did that and we distributed the two to three percent of energy that is being used in data centers, some of our rough calculations say we can probably heat nearly 80 million houses.”
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY
Navy seeks bids for ‘solid type’ thermal storage system in Monterey
The Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., is seeking bids on a thermal storage system for its Turbo Propulsion Laboratory. Some of the details:
“As part of the ONR funded ESTEP (Energy Systems Technology Evaluation Program) a heating system with thermal storage is being set up. The ESTEP program is designed to implement technologies that have the capability of reducing Navy and wider DoD facilities energy costs.
“The system is designed to match demand with available renewable supply and store the excess heating in a thermal storage system for use later. The technology that will be investigated uses solid inert materials rather than liquids as they are potentially simpler to use.”
ENERGY STORAGE
New hybrid approaches aim to boost the economics of energy storage
Greentech Media reports that interest is growing in hybrid approaches to energy storage. European companies such as Bosch and Younicos are working on projects that combine different battery technologies in a single system. Others are combining entirely different technologies, including phase change material. One example:
“Fraunhofer ISE says it has successfully tested a hybrid system that combines thousands of batteries and heat storage systems into a virtual storage system. The agent-based operation system has been developed and tested within the institute’s SmartEnergyLab facility.
“There, agent-based controllers manage a co-generation plant that also includes water storage, a heat pump with phase-change storage, and a lithium-ion battery system.”
PATENT APPLICATION
Integration of PCM inside evacuated tube solar collector
“An objective of the invention is to design and develop an effective method to collect and store heat in a solar collector for delayed release. An embodiment of the invention is directed to an evacuated tube collector, where PCM is placed directly inside the void space of the collector tube, next to the heat pipe.”
RESEARCH ROUNDUP
NEW FEATURE
Got a question about PCMs or thermal energy storage? Ask our expert
Dr. Mohammed Farid, an Entropy Solutions advisor and professor of chemical and materials engineering at the University of Auckland, has agreed to answer your questions about phase change material and thermal energy storage. We’ll select the best questions sent to inquiries@entropysolutionsinc.com and post the answers here each Friday.