Publications
Showing 23 results for Author: Navin Kumar
Jul, 2026
Journal
Thermal property characterization of phase change materials in building applications: A systematic review of fundamentals, recent progress, and future directions
Phase change materials (PCMs) can reduce building peak loads and enable demand-responsive thermal energy storage (TES), but their deployment depends on reliable measurement and interpretation of thermal properties across laboratory, intermediate, and application scales. This review systematically examines characterization methods, testing protocols, and recent advances for…
Jul, 2026
Journal
Thermoelectric heating and cooling–integrated dishwasher with thermal energy storage
Household dishwashers must address several performance goals: maximize washing and drying performance, while minimizing cycle duration, energy consumption, and water consumption. This study develops and examines a novel thermoelectric heating and cooling (TEHC) system with thermal energy storage applied to a household dishwasher (DW), aiming to improve the energy and dryin…
Jan, 2025
ORNL Report
2024 Stor4Build Annual Meeting – Exploring Challenges and Opportunities in Thermal Energy Storage for Buildings
In late August 2024, Stor4Build brought nearly 80 stakeholders from the thermal energy storage industry to Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), including researchers, startups, electric utilities, nonprofits, implementers, state energy efficiency offices, and original equipment manufacturers. . During the two-day Stor4Build Annual Meeting, participants engaged in vital di…
Dec, 2023
Conference Paper
Air Dehumidification using Ionic Liquid-Based Fiber Bundle Membrane Contactor
Air dehumidification is essential since excess moisture in the buildings causes discomfort to the occupants, encourages the production of air pathogens such as mold or mildew, and causes corrosion and rotting that degrade building materials. Existing moisture removal processes are mainly focused on condensation and desiccant (liquid or solid) techniques with direct contact…
Dec, 2023
Conference Paper
Steady-State Parametric Study of Semi-Open Absorption Heat Pump Water Heater Performance
Dec, 2023
Conference Paper
Review of Low-Cost Organic and Inorganic Phase Change Materials with Phase Change Temperature between 0°C and 65°C
Phase change materials (PCMs) that undergo a phase transition may be used to provide a nearly isothermal latent heat storage at the phase change temperature. This work reports the energy storage material cost ($/kWh) of various PCMs with phase change between 0-65°C. Four PCM classes are analyzed for their potential use in building systems: 1) inorganic salt hydrates, 2) or…
Dec, 2023
Conference Paper
Standard Characterization Techniques for Inorganic Phase Change Materials
Salt hydrates are promising candidates for phase change materials (PCMs) because of their low cost and high energy storage capacity. However, practical applications of salt hydrate based PCMs are limited due to their poor thermal cycling performance caused by phase separation and supercooling. Various techniques, including differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and transi…
Dec, 2023
Journal
Review of stability and thermal conductivity enhancements for salt hydrates
Salt hydrates can be used as phase change materials for thermal energy storage. Critical technical challenges for their widespread deployment include poor cycling stability, large supercooling, and low thermal conductivity. In this work, numerous enhancement techniques are reviewed. Related to stability, numerous existing methods to characterize the number of thermal cycle…