Abstract
This chapter focuses on anticorrosive protective coatings on Al-based elements of thermal energy storage (TES) units working with phase change materials (PCM). The main challenges of such heat accumulators were discussed, highlighting especially their main drawback, which is low thermal conductivity. This feature impairs the charging and discharging rates and the overall efficiency of such storage tanks. An opportunity for solving this problem was presented: the immersion of spatial metallic structures in the PCM deposit that significantly facilitates heat transfer. Nevertheless, working in an aggressive environment of molten salts as PCMs requires additional protection of the metal surface against corrosion. While giving a brief overview of various protection methods, this work primarily evaluates the utilization of plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO) oxide layers for this purpose. It characterizes PEO coatings for aluminum substrates in detail and suggests possible strategies to further improve the performance of these layers in TES applications.
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