CORP – Competence Center of Urban and Regional Planning
Doi
Abstract
Whilst the world is trying to find a way without fossil fuels it still needs to find a possibility to switch heat or cooling capacity from times generated to times needed. This will even be more of interest when all energy needs are switched to electric generation and thus to renewable energies. Coming to this point, energy will be generated when available and be stored in between. Nevertheless, there will be a large difference in case of costs using energy when it is generated and when in abundance. Therefore, energy storage, especially for heat, will be indispensable in the future, in particular for places where lots of people live and large amounts of heat are necessary. Such storages can be made of phase change materials that store heat in the phase change from solid to liquid and vice versa. Thus, this paper expands on the current discussion on traditional phase change material for latent heat storage by innovatively suggesting salt hydrates. Based on explaining the principles of phase change material, the authors illustrate the application of salt hydrates resulted from experiments of the authors. In doing so, they differentiate between integrating phase change materials in active (i.e. in the water heat system) and passive heat storages (i.e. in the building structure). With these applications shown, which are either already available or necessary to be provided in near the future, an ecologically efficient improvement of the microclimate can be engineered
