Triggering Mechanisms and Crystallisation Kinetics in Binary Supercooled Sugar-Alcohol Phase Change Materials

Hasila Jarimi; Ze Liu; Yuehong Su

doi:10.65582/gti.2026.009

Authors

Hasila Jarimi Department of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom; Solar Energy Research Institute, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0921-3283
Ze Liu Department of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom.
Yuehong Su Department of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6616-7626

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.65582/gti.2026.009

Keywords:

Binary Sugar Alcohol, Thermal Energy Storage, Avrami-type relations, Triggering Mechanisms

Abstract

The transition to low-carbon heating in the UK requires large-scale electrification of space and water heating, supported by compact and flexible thermal storage to balance variable renewable electricity supply and heat demand. This work investigates a binary sugar-alcohol–based supercooled phase change material (PCM) as a controllable thermal battery for low-temperature heating systems. The PCM is designed to melt in the 50–90 °C range, providing useful discharge temperatures for radiators and domestic hot water while exploiting long-duration supercooling for deferred heat release. The study was conducted in three stages. First, material screening was performed using T-history analysis to identify suitable binary sugar-alcohol mixtures with high latent heat, stable supercooling, and peak crystallisation temperatures in the target range. A non-eutectic mixture of xylitol–erythritol (Xy–Er) was selected, delivering a cumulative enthalpy of ~287.78 kJ kg⁻¹ under triggered conditions while remaining stably supercooled after cooling to ambient. Second, four triggering strategies were systematically evaluated, namely seeding, localised cooling using a thermoelectric (TEC) heat sink, electrode-based activation, and mechanical agitation, including the effect of prior cold crystallisation (reheating to 60 °C). Third, in situ crystallisation image-processing analysis was combined with an Avrami-type (JMAK) model with fixed exponent n=0.5 to quantify effective crystallisation kinetics. The results show that mechanical agitation and electrode triggering at 60 °C outperform seeding and TEC-based cooling, with mechanical agitation yielding the highest effective rate parameters. Meanwhile, TEC-based cooling in the present configuration was insufficient to produce significant crystallisation. These findings demonstrate that appropriately screened sugar-alcohol mixtures, combined with practical triggering methods, can enable controllable supercooled PCMs to be used as on-demand thermal batteries for future low-carbon heating systems.

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