VC-21A-C035 - Phase Change Material Incorporated Refrigeration Insulation for Refrigerator Energy Savings

Incorporating insulation with phase change materials (PCMs) can help enhance the insulation capability for refrigeration system. The phase change material can absorb or release large amount of latent heat of fusion depending on surrounding temperatures for efficient thermal management. This research focuses on how incorporating PCM to the conventional polyurethane (PU) foam insulation affects the refrigerator compartment temperatures and in-turn helps in conserving energy by significantly reducing the compressor running time. It was found that only 0.25-inch-thick PCM layer in insulation can certainly benefit the refrigerators by reducing the amount of electricity consumption and thus increasing the total energy savings through the numerical study results via COMSOL Multiphysics in this study. This work aims to investigate and optimize a PCM-incorporated insulation to accomplish the enhancement of thermal insulation performance for refrigerators.