A review on phase change cold storage in air-conditioning system: Materials and applications

This paper reviews the previous work on phase change cold storage for air-conditioning systems focusing on two aspects including phase change materials (PCMs) and applications. Besides the studies on phase change cold storage devices, the typical air-conditioning systems with cold storage are also reviewed, namely the solar air-conditioning system with cold storage, latent cooling storage and transport system and mixed cold storage air-conditioning system. Moreover, the problems with respect to compatibility, heat transfer enhancement, phase change properties of composite PCMs, etc., are discussed for further investigation.