Influence of Cu powders on the properties and characteristics of nano-MgO based aluminate cementitious materials

From the perspective of practical application, the development of desirable thermal and mechanical performance of solid sensible materials for thermal energy storage (TES) is highly needed. Here, we report the improved properties of nano-MgO optimized aluminate cementitious materials incorporated with Cu powders for TES. The composite TES materials were heated at 105, 350, and 900 °C, respectively. The results show that as the Cu powders content increases the thermal conductivity and volume heat capacity significantly increase, but there is a gradual decrease in compressive strength. Through the characterizations such as calorimetric test, XRD, FESEM, TG-DSC, and MIP, a significant feature of mass compensation also has been obtained, which might result from the oxidation reaction of the Cu powder at elevated temperatures.