Developing thermal storage materials is crucial for the efficient recovery of thermal energy. Salt-based phase-change materials have been widely studied. Despite their high thermal storage density and low cost, they still face issues such as low thermal conductivity and easy leaks. Therefore, a new type of NaCl-Al₂O₃@SiC@Al₂O₃ macrocapsule was developed to address these drawbacks, and it exhibited excellent rapid heat storage and release capabilities and was extremely stable, significantly reducing the risk of leakage at high temperatures for industrial waste heat recovery and in concentrated solar power systems above 800 °C. Thermal storage macrocapsules consisted of a double-layer encapsulation of silicon carbide and alumina and a self-standing core of NaCl-Al₂O_3. After enduring over 1000 h at a high temperature of 850 °C, the encapsulated phase-change material exhibited an extremely low weight loss rate of less than 5% compared with NaCl@Al₂O₃ and NaCl-Al₂O₃@Al₂O₃ macrocapsules, for which the weight loss rate was reduced by 25% and 10%, respectively, proving their excellent leakage prevention. The SiC powder layer, serving as an intermediate coating, further prevented leakage, while the use of Al₂O₃ ceramics for encapsulation enhanced the overall mechanical strength. It was innovatively discovered that the Al₂O₃ particles formed a network structure around the molten NaCl, playing an important role in maintaining the shape and preventing leakage of the composite thermal storage phase-change material. Furthermore, the addition of Al₂O₃ significantly enhanced the rapid heat storage and release rate of NaCl-Al₂O₃ compared to pure NaCl. This encapsulated phase-change material demonstrated outstanding durability and rapid heat storage and release performance, offering an innovative approach to the application of salt phase-change materials in the field of high temperature rapid heat storage and release and encapsulating NaCl as a high-temperature thermal storage material in a packed bed system. Compared with conventional salt-based phase-change materials, the developed product is expected to significantly improve the reliability and thermal efficiency of thermal storage systems.

Inorganic phase-change materials (PCMs) with high melting points have great potential for thermal energy storage systems. Sodium chloride (NaCl) has a high melting point (801 °C) and high latent-heat-storage density (482 kJ/kg). However, it is difficult to encapsulate NaCl using a sintered ceramic shell because of its good wettability against ceramics and high volume-expansion capacity during melting. In this study, a novel NaCl/Al₂O₃ powder-composite structure was developed as highly stable PCM core material for highly stable encapsulation. The shape-retention performance and the mechanism of NaCl/Al₂O₃ powder-composite structure during melting were investigated. We have successfully fabricated a NaCl/Al₂O₃ powder-composite structure, which has a higher NaCl volume ratio of 80 vol% than conventional techniques. The gel-like network structure of Al₂O₃ particles in molten NaCl was a key structure to keep the shape of the composite ball and to prevent the evaporation of molten NaCl.

Low-thermal-conductive reaction-bonded silicon nitride (RBSN), with a thermal conductivity of 8.08 W/(m·K), was developed by the addition of mullite micro-powder as a rare-earth-free oxide sintering agent to silicon nitride. This addition was expected to generate a glassy grain boundary as well as a solid solution of oxygen across the microstructure of the RBSN, which leads to low thermal conductivity. During the fabrication of a heat-insulating component with a hollow structure made of the RBSN via slip casting and subsequent reaction sintering, it was found that the viscosity of aqueous silicon-mullite slurries decreased evidently by the addition of the mullite micro-powder with ammonium polycarboxylate as a dispersant. The viscosity decreased even though the pH (7–8) of the slurries were maintained, and the particle size distributions did not vary significantly. At the effective mullite content when the viscosity decrease was attained, the ratio of the number of particles of mullite to silicon was approximately 1. Therefore, the viscosity decrease in Si slurry (50 vol%) was primarily caused by the steric hindrance due to the adsorption of dispersant by the mullite particles, preventing the direct contact among the silicon particles, rather than by electrostatic repulsions among the silicon particles. This was also explained through the modality of bimodal dispersion. Thus, it was found that the mullite not only acts as a sintering agent but also facilitates viscosity decrease of highly concentrated aqueous Si slurry, which successfully enables the integration of the slip casting and reaction sintering processes.