Investigation of the thermophysical properties of PCMs with novel ionic liquid assisted nanocomposite for sustainable thermal energy storage application

PCMs manage energy storage and heat transfer by taking in and releasing energy during phase transitions, usually between solid and liquid states. When PCMs melt, they absorb a significant amount of heat, and when they solidify, they release this heat, making them effective for thermal energy storage and transfer. However, their effectiveness is limited by low thermal conductivity and inconsistent performance due to supercooling. It is important to extend the research scope by exploring suitable nanocomposites to address the thermal property challenges faced by PCMs. In this research, a first-of-its-kind ionic liquid-assisted binary nanocomposite has been synthesized and studied to facilitate the performance issues along with property enhancement of PCMs. The novel nanocomposite has been integrated with RT-54 in 0.2 wt%, 0.4 wt% and 0.6 wt%. The nanocomposite prepared by EMIMBF ionic-liquid and AlN&LiNO₃ demonstrated superior thermal conductivity with a rise of 13.69 % from the base RT-54. Light absorbance enhanced up to 206.67 % with augmented chemical and thermal stability. A heating-cooling cycle experiment ensured an elevated range of heat gain with 37.16 % photo-to-thermal storage efficiency in this study. The EMIMBF&AlN&LiNO₃ can be utilized in low-temperature PV/T frameworks to address efficiency reduction in PV cells, with the rise of temperature.