Emerging ternary eutectic hydrated salt cold energy storage materials for cold chain transportation

With the improvement of people's quality of life, the demand for aquatic products has gradually risen, and the low-energy cold chain transportation of aquatic products has become an urgent problem. In this study, a novel ternary eutectic phase change cold storage material, comprising NaCl, NH4Cl, and H2O as the main components, was successfully prepared for using in the cold chain transportation of aquatic products. The evaporation method was first proposed to determine the proportion of the ternary eutectic phase change system used in cold storage materials. The effects of different proportions of thickening agents (PAAS) on the phase change materials in the NaCl-NH4Cl-H2O system during the gelation of the phase change materials were investigated. The phenomenon of a small supercooling degree of ternary eutectic phase change materials was verified by adding nucleating agents, and the mechanism was explained. The prepared SAWP (Synthesized from 18.38 wt% sodium chloride - 7.98 wt% ammonium chloride - 73.64 wt% water - 2 wt% sodium polyacrylate) has excellent performance to meet the cold chain transportation of aquatic products, with a phase change temperature of −24.7 °C, latent heat of phase change of 230.7 J/g, and a supercooling degree of 1.9 °C, respectively. The physical properties are stable and can still maintain excellent phase change properties after 500 cycles. Application experiments demonstrate that the cold storage plate filled with this ternary eutectic phase change material can be maintained at a temperature between −24.6 °C and −20 °C for 25 h, which meets the cold chain transportation of aquatic products.