Design and formulation of materials for energy storage applications

Driving by expanding population, growing economic and demanding quality of life, the worldwide energy consumption rates are predicted to grow unceasingly. The increasing energy consumption will lead to adverse impacts on global environment due to the substantial use of fossil fuel and emission of greenhouse gas. Therefore, the effective conservation of energy is a significant issue nowadays. Aim of this work is to present a possible exploitation of waste sources with the use of composite phase change materials which are briefly presented. Among the possible choice of ssPCMs one of them has been fabricated and studied in laboratory. With the same PCM a model has been developed for the coupling between ssPCM and thermoelectric and pyroelectric generator to understand the amount of energy that can be harvested from a waste source with this method. The two solutions are compared.