Abstract:
Energy conservation has become a critical issue in the world today as strong economic growth is
unfeasible without a sustainable strategy of energy conservation. Apart from long-term
environmental impact, a well-managed strategy for energy consumption even results in
improvement of the financial performance in the short term. Phase change materials (PCMs) with
its capacity of storing thermal energy as latent heat is a viable approach of the utilization of solar
heat, a green source of energy, and the optimization of energy consumption in buildings.
However, the obstacle that prevents PCMs from being applied widely in practice comes from its
poor performance in terms of heat transfer and shape stabilization. This article, therefore, presents
a critical review of PCM and effective methods to boost its performance in terms of shape
stabilization and transient heat transfer.
