The research studied the feasibility of using copper-coated polyethylene granules as a basis for creating efficient heat storage systems. A technology for imparting catalytic properties to a polymer surface by the joint processing of polymer granules and an activator metal in a ball mill with their subsequent metallization in a chemical reducing solution is proposed. The efficiency of copper-coating a polyethylene surface is shown to be largely determined by the activation stage and the assumption regarding the mechanism of interaction of the activator metal with the polymer surface is made. To obtain different amounts of metal on the polyethylene granules, it is proposed that the method of remetallization is used. It was established that the rate of copper ion reduction depends on the number of previous coatings and is determined by the area of interaction of the metal-coated granules with the chemical reducing solution. The obtained metal-coated polyethylene granules were characterized in terms of the viability of using it as a phase transition material for a heat storage system. Using the developed installation that simulates the heat accumulator operation, it was shown that the efficiency of using metal-coated polyethylene granules to create heat storage systems is higher. The copper coating deposited on the polyethylene granules was studied using scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction analysis.
Keywords: chemical reduction; copper; heat accumulator; metal-filled polymer composite; metallization; polyethylene.