Phase Change Material : Potential for increased fire resistance in concrete

Abstract: The European commission has in the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive from 2010 decided that its member states were required to ensure that all new buildings by the end of 2020 were nearly zero-energy buildings. These buildings require small amounts of energy compared to its performance in example by keeping a pleasant indoor climate. To achieve these goals there is an option for integrating phase changing material into building material.   The purpose of this project was to determine which kind of PCM is suitable for use in building materials to increase its fire resitance, taking inspiration from the report Fasomvandlingsmaterial: Risker och möjligheter written by Michael Försth, Alexandra Byström and Jonathan Wolf. In particular, the aim was to observe if the application of PCM, in pure powder form, into pure concrete could increase the time until it reaches it critical temperature of 500 °C. The choice of PCM to be used was decided by a literature review and initial thermal tests, and in this case, Magnesium Carbonate Hydroxide Pentahydrate, MCHP, was used as a substitute for the cement, in this project.    The project has been carried out through a literature review and laboratory experiments. The laboratory experiments were performed in different stages. First, the thermal properties of the PCM were decided by using a DSC (differential scanning calorimeter) and a TGA (Thermogravimetric analysis). Three kinds of PCMs (Magnesium hydroxide, Aluminium hydroxide and MCHP) were tested from the results of the literature review. The DSC gave a variation in results between the three tested PCMs. MCHP showed two melting phases which produced different kind of fire-retardant products and theoretically would give two instances of stopping the heating of the concrete. With that MCHP was then chosen as the most appropriate one to be incorporated into concrete. From there, pure concrete samples and with PCM mixed in, with different weight percentage varying between 2-10 weight percent (wt.%) of the cements weight, with a thermocouple embedded in the bottom were manufactured. Thereafter, a cone calorimeter was used with the constant heat flux of 50 kW·m-2 as a source of heat radiation.   The results shows that the application of the PCM in the concrete by replacing the cement does not give any noticeable increase in its fire resistance by increasing the time until it reaches 500 °C. Neither did it show any signs of the heating curve to flatten out, which in theory would have occurred during melting of the PCM. This could depend on the way the heat transfers down through the concrete and melts the PCM along the way towards the bottom and the thermocouple measuring the temperature. Making the thermocouple only register the heating of the concrete in close proximity to it. Therefore only a small amount of PCM melts and the required energy is not enough to halt the heating. Theoretical calculations performed showed that the melting of the PCM in the case with 5 and 10 wt.% gave an improvement by increasing the time until critical temperature is reached with 4 % and 7.3 %, compared to a pure concrete sample. The melting of the PCM is responsible for 1 % respectively 2 % of that time increased compared to the pure concrete sample. The rest of the increase in time comes from the PCMs thermal properties which is higher than the cement. The literature study shows that there exist many suitable PCM for increasing a building material’s fire resistance, some of which are already used as fire retardants. It also shows that PCM can affect a material’s fire resistance in more ways than just the heat storage (latent heat) in the melting phase.    The conclusion of this report is that substituting concrete with MCHP in powder form is not suitable and does not affect the concretes fire resistance. But the usage of PCM in concrete should not be dismissed. There exist different ways to implement the PCM into the concrete which could give a desirable result.