Fabrication of microencapsulated phase change materials using microfluidics

Abstract:
Conventional PCM microcapsule fabrication usually used chemical and physical methods, however, the prepared PCM microcapsules are poorly monodispersed. In this paper, we used microfluidics to fabricate W/O/W double emulsion droplets, then the middle phase is solidified by UV curing to form PCM microcapsules. Different core-shell ratios were successfully prepared by adjusting the flow rates of the inner and middle phases under the same outer flow rate. We measured the inner and outer diameters of microcapsules to explore the relationship between the droplet diameters and the flow rates. Furthermore, to investigate the thermal efficiency of PCM microcapsules, a thermal performance test is proposed to measure the indoor temperature under several temperature circulations. Our results indicate that the PCM microcapsules have good energy and heat storage performance and are beneficial for the building fields to keep the room temperature constant.