Paper presents the results of evaluation of heat resistance and specific heat capacity of MAR-M-200, MAR-M-247 and Rene 80 nickel

superalloys. Heat resistance was evaluated using cyclic method. Every cycle included heating in 1100°C for 23 hours and cooling for 1

hour in air. Microstructure of the scale was observed using electron microscope. Specific heat capacity was measured using DSC

calorimeter. It was found that under conditions of cyclically changing temperature alloy MAR-M-247 exhibits highest heat resistance.

Formed oxide scale is heterophasic mixture of alloying elements, under which an internal oxidation zone was present. MAR-M-200 alloy

has higher specific heat capacity compared to MAR-M-247. For tested alloys in the temperature range from 550°C to 800°C precipitation

processes (γ′, γ′′) are probably occurring, resulting in a sudden increase in the observed heat capacity.

In the paper, a method for determination of the near-critical region boundary is proposed. The boundary is evaluated with respect to variations of specific heat capacity along isobars. It is assumed that the value of specific heat capacity inside the near-critical region exceeds by more than 50% the practically constant value typical for fluids under normal conditions. It appears that large variations of heat capacity are also present for high-pressure subcritical states sufficiently close to the critical point. Therefore, such defined near-critical region is located not only in supercritical fluid domain but also extends into subcritical fluid. As an example, the boundaries of the near-critical region were evaluated for water, carbon dioxide and R143a.

Organic phase change materials (PCMs), which are typically used as the accumulating material in latent heat thermal energy storage, provide chemical and thermal stability, but have low thermal conductivity. This limits heat transfer rates and prolongs storage charging/discharging time. A method to improve the thermal conductivity of organic PCMs is to add nanomaterials with high thermal conductivity. The paper presents the research on the effect of the addition of graphene nanoparticles (GNPs) on the thermal conductivity of organic PCM (RT28 HC), and its energy storage properties. The transient hot wire and the pipe Poensgen apparatus methods were used to measure thermal conductivity, and the differential scanning calorimetry method was used to determine the heat capacity and phase change temperature. The achieved characteristics of thermal conductivity depending on the amount of added graphene nanoparticles (and stabilizer) indicate that GNPs allow to increase the thermal conductivity on average by 26–87% in the solid state and by 7–28% in the liquid, but this reduces the PCM heat capacity. Therefore, the paper indicates what mass fraction of dopants is optimal to achieve the greatest improvement in thermal conductivity of RT28 HC and its smallest reduction in heat capacity, to use this nano-enhanced PCM in practice.