High Thermal Energy Storage And Thermal Conductivity Of Few-Layer Graphene Platelets Loaded Phase Change Materials: A Thermally Conductive Additive For Thermal Energy Harvesting

3D-structured graphite efficiently converted into 2D-structured few-layer graphene platelets (FGP) through sequentially controlled top-down approach by adopting 2-stage exfoliation. A process of solvent-phase exfoliation with turbulence energy cascade-dominated complex fluid dynamics-assisted vertical diffusion was deployed to agitate the particle to disperse them in a solvent with turbulence to delaminate the layered-material into thin sheet-like structured FGP consist of 3 to 10 layers. The underlying critical mechanism involved in fragmentation and delamination to FGP was proposed. The enhancement in thermal conductivity of FGP loaded myristic acid found to be around 32.14%, 171.42% and 383.5% for 1, 3 and 5 wt% of FGP, respectively. Thermal conductivity of phase change materials composites increased with increase in FGP loading and decreased with increase in temperature. A phenomenon of a decrease in latent heat and phase transition temperature with increase in FGP loading was observed.