Waste fat material as PCM for thermal storage system

There is a worldwide demand for alternative energy solutions instead of fossil fuels use. Renewable energy sources (RES) will be for the next future the crucial and the most important actor in the energy scenario worldwide. One of the main RES drawbacks is their intermittent nature along the day. One possible solution is the application of energy storage systems, precisely on thermal storage applications [1]. This solution provides the benefit of capturing available energy for use at a later time. Among thermal energy systems, adsorption process was selected and exploited considering a circular economic approach. With this vision, a non‐traditional PCM was employed, such as hydrated salts or paraffin [2]. In this work the circular economic approach was employed in order to reuse a special organic waste coming from restaurants and kitchen for the food production: fat residues. The approach followed an experimental and a modeling approach. This approach was followed in order to evaluate the PCM performance of such wastes compared to the most used organic material, the paraffinic wax. In detail, it was considered as PCM: butter, lard and pork fat source, besides of paraffin wax.