A Brief Review on Thermal Conductive Polymeric Aerogel Composites

A Aerogels have many applications in industry due to their very low density, high porosity, high specific surface area, and other unique properties. Thermal conductive polymer aerogels are widely used due to the high demand of industry for low density and high thermal conductive composites. The main application of thermal conductive polymer aerogels is shape stable templet for thermal energy storage systems in phase change composites. Phase change materials (PCMs) are crystalline or semi-crystalline materials that have the ability to store or release thermal energy during the phase change from solid to liquid and vice versa. The amount of thermal energy storage/release strongly depends on melting/crystallization enthalpy and mass/volume fraction of phase change material in the system. The porous structure of the aerogel can appropriately store the molten phase change material and prevents its release. Increasing the loading capacity of PCMs due to the high thermal conductivity and porosity of thermal conductive aerogels result in fusion latent heat preserving and ensure their high efficiency in thermal energy storage. In this article, the most important thermal conductive polymer aerogels that researchers have studied in recent years, are reviewed. It has also been tried to introduce and investigate the appropriate conductive aerogels for thermal energy storage based on phase change material systems.