The Genius of Phase Change Building Insulation!

Check out Hoymiles for your Solar Micro-Inverters Today! geni.us/Inverters *Corrections/Clarifications Below - When hot outside, the material melts and absorbs energy keeping your room from getting as warm. - When cold outside, the material freezes and releases energy warming up your room. - I had the energy and temperature axes labeled incorrectly they should be switched! Temp on the Y axis, and energy on the X.

In the first graph, the units of the two axes should be swapped. Temperature at phase change doesn’t change but energy does. Interesting material!

The radiant barrier is an insulator, but phase change isn't insulation, it's energy storage.

The units for the graph should be swapped!

I've been following this for a while. It's cool that it's getting used more. I've seen another version of the technology that uses a tank. Basically it functions like a heat pump, with pipes running through it circulating a coolant/heating agent. Something like that could be used with thermal solar to even more heat for the night. Imagine a system where your photovoltaic cells are cooled, for maximum efficiency, and the waste heat was stored in a tank to heat the house during the night. There is a famous kind of wall art that has a lot of boards sticking out for it, sort of like a maze. When I saw this I thought if you you could design something like that with this in it's core you could have a lot of passive heat exchange because of all the surface area. I think the wall version could probably work between studs. You'd lose a little space at the stud, but I think that would be okay. (Much lower tech, but have you seen T-Studs? They are an all wood product that creates a lot less thermal bridging than normal stud construction by running two studs at right angles with a gap between them. They are connected by dowels and you blow insulation in between them. Your only points of contact are the dowels.

I'm considering making myself a van, and I reckon this kind of material would be perfect there because I'm limited on how much solar I can install on it. In a small space like that the price also is less of a concern, and every last bit of efficiency makes a huge difference.

As someone who has been trained as a chemist and a love of science, I found this very interesting. Thank you!

Thank you for making this video! I've been pondering this idea in the past year and I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one curious about this!

You should make it clear that phase change material is only useful in locations where the temperature swings across the melting point/desired temperature: In the days it’s hotter than desired and the excess energy melts the material. For instance in Minnesota in the winter, days are much warmer than nights, but there’s never excess heat to melt the material. It’s best in desert climates where the nights are cold and the days are hot.

Thanks a lot for sharing this. Definitely sounds very interesting. If you could make a video on how you plan to seal your house so air drafts don't constantly move in and out, but still maintaining some sort of fresh air input so the house doesn't get stuffy or have stale air, it would be very helpful to me.

glad to see you recognizing AC coupled microinverters. whoa! Personally I'm team Enphase but its good to have competition in the market. Keep up the great work!

That is amazing! I'm defiantly going to use this in my tiny home.

I would consider this material for radiators . On a south wall thermal panels collect heat and transfer it to radiators inside a house during winter, in summer you run the system in revers during nights to cool a house

Living near Phoenix & I need to reinsulate my attic sometime soon, I will legitimately look into this stuff. I got two ACs for this place, the less I use them the better lol.

8:39 you’re testing the concept! Awesome!! Great video

I have something very similar on top of my wood stove - a large pot of parafin wax. When the fire is going it melts the wax (absorbs heat) and when the fire dies down it releases the stored energy as heat as it solidifies. Same principle in action.

Hey Ricky. The way you drew the water heating graph, Energy should be on the x axis and Temperature on the y axis... or you should draw the line differently given the way you labelled the axes.

The QE Platinum would REALLY make sense in the upper-Midwest especially for attic use if your attic is part of the "conditioned space" in the home. If they make it in standard roll widths (12, 16, 24" on center) and the "pouches" about 12" long it could be stapled right to the bottom of the roof rafters to hold your insulation up against the roof decking. It would also help enormously with air infiltration if you tape the seams. Ricky, I suspect THAT will make a huge difference in your house renovation, just getting to a point where your house would pass a blower door test.

There was a builder in Wheaton, Illinois back in the mid 80s, who built high-end homes with ultra low energy use. He dabbled with phase change technologies. I’ve been waiting to see that technology go mainstream ever since, and now it looks like we may be only a few years away. It’s about time!

we not only use PCM in wall and ceiling, but also put in floor heating to save energy. This do increase thermal comfort and purely passive way. very smart material 😃😀