ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the recent research on thermal energy storage (TES) systems for solar applications. Due to the importance of the maturity of the storage media in each TES system, a state-of-the-art report of the recent developments of TES materials is provided. The chapter provides an overview of the newest published research toward the advancement on the materials side for solar TES applications. Advantages of using TES in an energy system are the increase of overall efficiency and better reliability, but it can also lead to better economics, reduced investment and running costs, less pollution of the environment, and fewer CO2 emissions. Sensible heat storage is one of the most developed technologies for thermal storage and has been used for many years in both the domestic and industrial sectors. Latent heat storage materials are usually classified according to the material origin; thus, they can be either organic or inorganic.
