Effects of morphology and internal voids of copper ribs on heat transfer performance in copper foam/paraffin composite phase change materials

Thermal-enhanced composite phase change materials have broad application prospects for heat transfer and heat storage. In this paper, the effects of porosity, pore size and internal voids of copper ribs on the thermal conductivity of the copper foam/paraffin composite phase change materials were measured and analyzed in combination with a Host Disk thermal conductivity meter and industrial CT scanning technology. It is found that effective thermal conductivity of the composites decreased with the increasing porosity, and the internal voids of copper ribs was an important factor affecting the thermal conductivity, which reduced the difference between the experimental and the theoretical data from 23.1% to 0.43%. Then, the internal heat storage rate and thermal homogeneity of the composites with different copper morphology were calculated by lumped parameter method, and the effects of porosity, pore size and copper morphology on the heat storage rate and thermal homogeneity of the composites were also analyzed. Results showed that triangular prism structure had better performance than other structures.