Modelling Advanced Materials and Systems for Thermal Energy Storage

Dear Colleagues,

Thermal Energy Storage (TES) technologies are essential for moving towards a more reliable and competitive exploitation of intermittent sources of heat (e.g., solar energy). In this regard, one of the most crucial aspects is the material adopted to store the thermal energy. A relevant approach for short-term TES is based on phase change materials, which can ensure higher energy density than traditional sensible heat storage systems while keeping low cost and high cyclability. Thermochemical TES shows energy density even higher than the latent one, with the additional advantage of loss-free storage, which makes it particularly suitable for long-term heat accumulation. The scientific community has also shown a growing interest towards composite TES materials formed by at least two components. In these composites, micro- or nano-fillers are introduced in the base TES material (e.g., latent or sorption one), to enhance its effective properties. The current challenge is predicting the heat and mass transfer and thermal storage performance throughout the different scales of interest, thus correlating the molecular features of TES materials with the effective response of TES systems.

This Special Issue on “Modelling Advanced Materials and Systems for Thermal Energy Storage” provides a forum to show original research works mainly related to the computational study of novel materials and systems for TES. Topics and themes can include but are not limited to:

• At microscopic level: ab-initio, molecular dynamics, and mesoscopic simulations to understand the thermophysical properties of TES materials.
• At macroscopic level: continuum simulations to assess the heat and mass transfer and heat storage performance of TES components.
• At system level: lumped-element models to study the operation of complex TES systems for realistic time intervals.
• Machine learning tools to ease the coupling between the different physical scales and to improve the overall design and efficiency of TES systems.

Dr. Matteo Fasano
Dr. Matteo Morciano
Guest Editors

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