RT Journal Article
T1 Rheological aspects of solid-to-liquid phase transitions in paraffin wax/bitumen blends for thermal energy storage applications
A1 Gutiérrez Blandón, Coraima
A1 Cuadri Vega, Antonio Abad
A1 Partal López, Pedro
A1 Tenorio Alfonso, Adrián
A1 Delgado Sánchez, Clara
A1 Navarro Domínguez, Francisco Javier
AB This paper correlates the evolution of the rheological and thermal properties with microstructure during the phase change of a blend of bitumen with a selected paraffin wax, having a melting point centred around 60 ◦C, for the development of bituminous based membranes for thermal energy storage applications. For this purpose, temperature sweep tests within the linear viscoelastic range, stationary state flow curves, Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), polarised optical microscopy observations and solar irradiation tests were performed. The reported rheological results clearly point out a gel-like behaviour for both paraffin and paraffin/bitumen blend that is preserved almost up to the end of the phase change interval. This is consequence of the development of a network of interconnected crystals of paraffin wax which progressively disappear as temperature increases.Interestingly, a weak gel structure is kept even at low crystallinity levels since only a few junctions among structures are necessary to build a spanning network. Finally, the large degree of crystallinity of paraffin wax retained in the bitumen/paraffin wax is behind its thermoregulation ability, as was corroborated by solar irradiation tests. Therefore, results indicated the great potential of these formulations for thermal energy storage and related applications.
PB Elsevier
SN 1359-4311
SN 1873-5606 (electrónico)
YR 2024
FD 2024-06-20
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10272/23987
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10272/23987
LA eng
NO Gutiérrez-Blandón, C., Cuadri, A. A., Partal, P., Tenorio-Alfonso, A., Delgado-Sánchez, C., & Navarro, F. J. (2024). Rheological aspects of solid-to-liquid phase transitions in paraffin wax/bitumen blends for thermal energy storage applications. In Applied Thermal Engineering (Vol. 253, p. 123779). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2024.123779
NO Grant TED2021-131284B-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 (Spain) and grant PID2020-116905RB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 (Spain) and European Union “NextGenerationEU”/PRTR. Clara Delgado and Adrián Tenorio also acknowledge financial support from Junta de Andalucía (Spain) through post-doctoral Grants DC 01228 (co-funded by the European Union Fondo Social Europeo (FSE)) and POSTDOC_21_00644, respectively, Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Huelva / CBUA and the Cátedra Fundación CEPSA.
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 1 jun 2026