The effect of surface energy on the heat transfer enhancement of paraffin wax/carbon foam composites Original Research Article

The influence of carbon foam surface energy on heat transfer through paraffin wax/carbon foam composite was investigated. Carbon foam samples were surface treated and their corresponding surface energy values were measured. A theoretical model was formulated to analyze the mass of paraffin wax absorbed for both pristine and surface activated carbon foam samples based on the concept foam wettability. An experimental study was carried out for heating of the wax/carbon foam composite samples to study the phase change heat transfer due to the melting of wax within the foam matrices. The above studies showed that a greater mass of wax was absorbed within the activated carbon foam samples as compared to the pristine sample which can be due to their greater wettability. This resulted in an improvement in heat transfer rate for the activated samples. The total energy storage rate for the activated composite samples was compared with the pristine sample for the same heating duration and an enhancement of more than 18% was observed for the two activated samples. These studies revealed that the surface energy of carbon foams can play an important role in improving the overall thermal performance of wax/carbon foam composites.