INTERVIEW
Startup focuses on commercialization of shape-stable PCM
Berlin-based startup Nanolope, founded in 2020, is developing shape-stable phase change materials for use in building insulation and other applications. As one of 10 finalists for the 2024 ACHEMA Start-up Award, the company pitched its technology at this month’s ACHEMA trade show in Frankfurt.
Another startup, re.solution of Aachen, won the 15,000 euro prize for its textile-recycling technology. But Nanolope CEO Felix Marske, right, was happy for the chance to present his company’s technology at the show.
“Two new venture capitalists are interested,” he said. “So it seems to have worked out.”
In an interview with Phase Change Matters this spring, Marske talked about the development of the PCM, including one of his early „a-ha“ moments in the lab.
Q: How did you become interested in phase change material?
A: “During the last weeks of my master’s thesis in chemistry at Leipzig University, I was researching thermal insulation materials and read multiple papers about phase change material. Nearly every study was doing the same thing. A lot of research was already done some years ago. I also saw some critical reviews and could only agree that some points in PCM science are still missing, especially the link to system integration. Most PCM research, I think, is only about improving the systems, which means heat conductivity improvement, thermal conductivity improvement or improvement of the latent heat.
“But they do not know that the current form of phase change material is not easy to integrate, that this is a huge problem. You can put PCM in plastic bottles, but plastic has not a good thermal conductivity and the heat transfer is really bad. So I thought about cool stuff that BASF was doing with Micronal PCM in the past, but they have not produced in a one-batch synthesis, a complete material out of it which is shape-stabilized.
“There are some shape-stabilized phase change materials out there, but they have a really low amount of phase change material in it. For example, if it’s a concrete-based material perhaps 5 percent, gypsum perhaps 15 percent. Not a lot. So I thought, can I do it to 80 or 90 percent?
“So this became my major interest. I was really only doing two or three syntheses during my master’s thesis in chemistry and they worked very well. And so my professor told me, OK, try to pitch this idea to a completely different research group, Professor Thomas Hahn at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. And he’s normally a catalyst guy. He has no experience in energy storage materials, but he really liked the idea. Professor Hahn told me, ‘OK, you have these four years. For your research, you can do it nearly all alone. If you need help, I could direct a little bit. You can really do everything without asking and just do your thing. And I only want that you publish papers.’ So, a good deal for me.”
Q: Could you tell me a bit about the history of your startup?
A: “It all started in 2020. Funny thing, it was New Year’s Eve, at a wonderful party. At one side at one couch I met a good friend, Patrick Richter, that I knew from my hobby as a DJ. He sat next to me and told me: ‘I am an economics student, and I’m not sure what I should do after my study and I’ve heard that you have a great product that only waits to be on market.’ He was really interested and that was the starting point for the idea of bringing shape-stabilized phase change material to market. So we were a team of two.
“Later, Eric Matthes, our engineer, joined the team. He was doing also a practice time under my supervision, especially about a patent about these nano-PCMs, an improved synthesis approach of the original paper that I published during my studies. He was also very interested in system integration and he also had multiple years of experience in heater companies. A second chemist, Shewaye Yismaw, joined the team in April 2023.”
Q: What is the origin of the name of your product and company?
A: “I am asked this question a lot. ‘Nano’ refers to size. Our pores are around 100 nanometers. ‘Lope’ is from ‘envelope.’ We see ourselves as a package company that refines PCM so that it’s easier for system integration.”
Q: What are the unique features of Nanolope shape-stabilized PCM?
A: “What’s making it different is especially the combination of the high storage capacity, which is 150 to up to 200 joules per gram, close to that of the original PCM. And it has also the same mechanical stability as gypsum boards, and this is something new. So normally you only have, I would say, a high latent heat, or you have a high mechanical stability, not both of them. That makes it unique, I would say.”
Q: So, in a wallboard, for example, if I strike a nail into it, there’s no liquid to leak out?
A: “No. Only a thin film, because it’s an open-pore system. But, no, it’s not coming out. And it has been tested in a lab and it is long-term stable for 32 years, so like 12,000 melting and freezing cycles without deformation. This is also something that makes it unique.”
Q: What feedstock is used and how is it synthesized?
A: “We can use different feedstocks. We are now part of the green chemistry hub in Germany, which is really now built up with 30 million euros in funding by the German state, and it is also under the supervision of Professor John Warner. This is a good opportunity, which means we can use paraffins for our synthesis, typical paraffins provided, for example, by the company Rubitherm. But we can also use bio-based ones such as Crodatherm, a PCM developed by Croda International, that we can easily shape-stabilize. Or any other kind of ester fatty acid, typical organic PCMs, we can shape-stabilize. The range is 5 to 70 degrees Celsius as a melting point of the phase change material that we can shape-stabilize. We can adjust the temperature for every different application that we have. Currently, we have a lot of companies that are interested and have very specific needs that we want to solve with Nanolope PCM.”
Q: Do you have any flammability issues with the product?
A: “We have lower flammability issues than normal organic PCMs have. We are now working with a coating company for anti-flammability issues, but also with University Halle. I would say in six months we start the research for anti-flammable Nanolope PCM so that we can even use it as wall material.”
Q: Your website lists four applications under development: hot water storage, PV heat batteries, building materials and energy-saving heaters. Which are you focusing on now?
A: “Hot water storage. That will be one pilot project. The second will be hypocaust heating modules, especially for bigger halls. And also in combination by photovoltaic solar thermal systems by the Swiss company soblue AG. We have two companies on board, soblue and a smaller Swiss company, HST, which is producing these hypocaust heaters. These two applications, we will really focus on.”
Q: Can you recall an “a-ha!” moment in your PCM journey?
A: “There’s more than one moment. But I would say, as for my Ph.D., it was definitely when I had the first broken pieces of shape-stabilized PCM. And it really sounds bad but it was not bad. I had these broad pieces, and the funny thing is I was standing on it and it was still stable. That was one of these a-ha moments. So I thought, OK, let’s improve the synthesis and get these broken pieces to a monolith. It was a very good starting point.”
IN BRIEF
• Sunamp Ltd. is one of three finalists competing for the UK’s top engineering award, the 2024 MacRobert Award, and its £50,000 purse. The others are Google DeepMind’s AI-powered weather forecasting and the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca’s scale-up and manufacture of a Covid vaccine. The winner will be announced at the Royal Academy of Engineering’s awards dinner on July 9. “Being nominated for the MacRobert Award is amazing recognition that underscores the profound impact dedicated teams can have on society and the planet, proving that with the right vision and determination even the smallest players can drive monumental change,” said Andrew Bissell, right, Sunamp CEO and co-founder.
• A team from the Materials Innovation Center, a research and development partnership between the University of Leicester and TWI Ltd., will test the performance of molten salt as a PCM for a new electrothermal energy storage technology system designed to reuse waste heat, as well as the performance of the construction materials against corrosion, aging, stress and thermal cycles. The project is part of the SEHRENE (Store Electricity and Heat foR climatE Neutral Europe) initiative to develop energy storage technology using PCM.
• FlexBlue is a project designed to create a model for developing flexible cooling supply systems that can be implemented inexpensively and easily. Heiko Maass of the Institute for Automation and Applied Computer Science at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology explained: „In one demonstrator, we combine photovoltaics, battery storage, compression refrigeration machine and an actively controllable PCM cold storage system, and in the other demonstrator, we combine an active PCM multi-layer heat storage system with a booster heat pump in combination with a cogeneration plant, an adsorption refrigeration machine and a cold storage system.“ FlexBlue is funded by the Germany Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection.
• Plaksha University is partnering with Tabreed India to test various energy storage technologies and integrate them with a smart microgrid. Their first joint project integrates innovative PCM-based thermal energy storage with solar energy in a hostel building. “We hope to demonstrate the cost and sustainability benefits of replacing battery energy storage with thermal energy storage systems, and the scalability potential of TES systems in the energy transition efforts underway,” said Sudheer Perla, managing director of Tabreed Asia.
• U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory researchers have found that retrofitting residential buildings to make them more resilient to extreme weather could save lives. The team studied three passive weatherization methods: adding extra insulation, integrating a layer of PCM and enhancing air sealing. PCM provided the most temperature-regulation benefits. Researchers reported that a combination of the retrofits could increase the length of time the buildings stay safe from two hours to 42 hours during a winter storm and from 12 to 37 in extreme heat.
• A new household refrigeration technology that employs PCM promises to improve energy efficiency by more than 20% and reduce CO2 emissions by 30%. The technology was developed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. “PCMs are integrated with evaporator coils to keep temperature constant, requiring one operating cycle and allowing refrigerators to operate almost 100% at night-time, when energy use is lower,” ORNL’s Zhiming Gao said. “This reduces electricity demand, saves costs and maintains efficiency.” ORNL says that replacing the 100 million refrigerators currently in U.S. households with the new technology would save up to 49 billion kW of primary energy consumption and reduce CO2 emissions by 7.2 million tons. The technology also could be applied to commercial and transportation refrigeration.
• Mattresses that regulate temperature with PCMs are significantly more effective at cooling than those that use gel, according to Grace Wu, of the Good Housekeeping Institute, in the Washington Post article “We asked experts whether cooling bedding works. Here’s what they said.” That comfort comes at a cost, with only negligible effects with a cheaper model mattress with PCMs and the best results with the priciest model, said Derek Hales, CEO of NapLab.com. “You really don’t start to see notably better cooling performance until you’re spending $1,500-$2,000 on a queen,” he said.
• Massachusetts startup Pascal has raised $8 million to commercialize its high-efficiency heat pumps, air conditioners and refrigerators based on solid refrigerant technology. Launched out of Harvard University, Pascal uses a novel class of solid barocaloric refrigerants based on metal-halide perovskites that operate at lower pressures than previously possible. Barocaloric materials work by using pressure to stimulate solid-to-solid phase change, in which the material remains a solid but the internal molecular structure is changed, thereby releasing heat.
JOBS
• Sunamp Ltd., Edinburgh, Scotland, has an opening for a mechanical engineer on the R&D team. According to the job description, “the role will be pivotal in the definition, ideation, and development of new and modified products and extensions to Sunamp’s existing product range. You will be an experienced engineer with a sound knowledge of thermodynamics, heat transfer and thermal properties of materials and manufacturing processes.”
PATENTS
Container for phase change material
U.S. patent application 20240159443 (applicant Sun Ice Energy Pte. Ltd., Singapore):
„One of the purposes of the present disclosure is notably to propose an economical storage means to store phase change materials and make their integration easier into slabs, walls or ceilings, in particular to build skating rinks or cold rooms and for their transport or handling. Said invention can thus be presented as a container for phase change materials, comprising: a closed shell where a filling opening is arranged; a phase change material nested in said shell; one or several recesses designed to receive a conduit for refrigerant fluid.“
Resin composition and molded article
U.S. patent application 20240150552 (applicant Mitsui Chemicals Inc., Tokyo):
„The resin composition of the present invention can be produced through melt kneading at a relatively high temperature (for example, a temperature of 200° C. or higher). In addition, use of the resin composition of the present invention enables production of a molded article that has characteristics not allowing the heat storage compound (phase change material) to leak (to bleed out) from resin, has controllable thermosensitivity, and is excellent in fracture resistance and light weight properties.“
Thermal management for container-based data centers
U.S. patent 11985803 (applicant Core Scientific Operating Co., Bellevue, Washington):
„An improved system and method for operating a plurality of computing devices (e.g., in a container-based data center) is contemplated. By monitoring temperatures, and preheating computing devices, the computing devices may be safely restarted after low temperature power outages. Preheating may for example use heaters or warm air temporarily diverted from external sources such as nearby buildings. To mitigate shorter cold weather power outages, thermal mass (e.g., phase change material or “PCM”) may be positioned near the computing devices to capture heat from normal operation that is then released during cold weather power outages to reduce unwanted low temperature spikes.“
More U.S. patents and patent applications:
Hybrid systems and methods for managing thermal energy (PhaseStor LLC, Asheboro, N.C.) | Solar photovoltaic powered phase change material thermal energy storage system (King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia) | Battery module comprising cooling plate filled with phase change material (Hyundai Mobis Co. Ltd., Seoul, South Korea) | Charge port cooling system for an electric vehicle (GM Global Technology Operations LLC, Detroit, Michigan) | Heating and cooling system for a vehicle (Ford Global Technologies LLC, Dearborn, Michiga.) | Phase change material energy storage for electric vehicle thermal management system and method (Honeywell International Inc., Charlotte, N.C.) | Nested heating system (Sheetak Inc., Austin, Texas)
RESEARCH ROUNDUP
From From Polymer Composites:
• Latent heat storage bio-composites from egg-shell/PE/PEG as feasible eco-friendly building materials
From ACS Omega:
From Journal of Building Engineering:
From Chemical Engineering Journal:
From Applied Thermal Engineering:
• Energy Storage in Lightweight Aggregate and Pervious Concrete Infused with Phase Change Materials
From International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer:
From Journal of Energy Storage:
From Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells:
• Phase change front tracking methods in a vertical tube-in-tube phase change material heat exchanger
From Energy and Buildings:
From Thermal Science and Engineering Progress:
• Investigation on melting thermal resistance of PCMs applied in roof structures
From Materials Today:
From Energy:
• Residential Micro-CHP system with integrated phase change material thermal energy storage
From Energy Sources:
From Journal of Applied Polymer Science:
• Harnessing leather waste in polymer matrix for sustainable smart shape-stable phase change materials
From Advances in Civil Engineering:
• Thermal Performance Assessment of Concrete Walls Using Different Phase Change Materials
From Results in Engineering:
From Case Studies in Thermal Engineering:
From Thermochimica Acta:
• Thermal stability of organic Phase Change Materials (PCMs) by accelerated thermal cycling technique
NETWORKING
Connect with PCM experts and industry leaders on LinkedIn
More than 1,800 people have joined a LinkedIn group devoted to the discussion of phase change material and thermal energy storage. You are invited to join the Phase Change Matters group and connect with PCM and TES experts from around the world.
This month we welcome Dave Tapan, aerothermal engineer at Airbus, Mumbai, India; Giovanni La Picca, mechanical designer and project manager at NIRI Performance, Turin, Italy; Tobias Krings, work study in green building engineering at Hottgenroth Gruppe, Cologne, Germany; Karolin Stamp, process manager at BeeBox GmbH, Überlingen, Germany; Charles Tuffile, senior manager at Bosch, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Yurun Cao, marketing manager at Heatmate New Energy, Hong Kong; Roberto Semino, finance officer at i-TES srl, Turin, Italy; Dayla Riera, research fellow at University of Camerino, Camerino, Italy; Ahmad Al-Zoubi, senior chemical engineer, thermal energy storage, at phelas, Munich, Germany; and Jaimik Patel, aeronautical engineering student at Gujarat Technological University, India.
In a recent post, PCM researcher Harald Mehling writes:
„I am recently reading a lot of literature, and see that too high heating rates are still common when measuring PCM with DSC. This is a problem that was already identified some 20 years ago. The overall phase change enthalpy might still be ok, but the crucial relation with temperature is often significantly wrong. The simple solution is to use small heating rates, determined by varying the heating rate until it has no significant effect any more. This is really important.
„For those interested, some years ago I made a presentation on all that, and the presentation is available as a video to download.
In it I describe the problem, the general solution in the PCM-RAL test criteria, and the specific DSC standard developed in an IEA Annex. You can find it at the PCM-RAL website, pcm-ral.org/pcm/en/quality-association-pcm/consultants/harald-mehling. See the bottom link and then click on the slide that appears.“
NEWS TIPS
Does your company, agency or university have a job opening, new research, new product or other news you’d like to share? I would love to hear from you. Please contact newsletter editor Amy Phillips at phasechangematters@gmail.com.
A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR
This newsletter is made possible through the generous support of the RAL Quality Association PCM and the members listed below. To learn more about the association, including membership benefits, please contact Stefan Thomann, executive director, at pcm@kellencompany.com.
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