Latest Advancements in Solar Photovoltaic-Thermoelectric Conversion Technologies: Thermal Energy Storage Using Phase Change Materials, Machine Learning, and 4E Analyses

Table 4

Diverse microencapsulation methods of PCMs [91].

Technique	Method	Pros	Cons	Quality (performance)	Shelf life	Reliability
Chemical	Emulsion polymerization [92]	A polymer with a large molecular size	Extracting the polymer from the surfactant to obtain a pure product	Good	Long	Good
	Suspension polymerization [93]	Effective regulation of the reaction’s temperature	Only a small number of monomers can dissolve in water	Good	Long	Good
	Interfacial polymerization [94]	Multifunctional, ability to decompose, and mechanical durability	Inadequate mechanical characteristics	Poor	Short	Poor
Physical	Spray drying [95, 96]	Low cost and easy to scale up	Clumping together of particles that are still uncovered	Poor	Short	Poor
Physical-chemical	Sol-gel [97]	An inorganic casing that has a high capacity for conducting heat	Still being investigated	Good	Medium	Good
	Solvent evaporation [98]	Low cost	Combining small-scale production	Poor	Medium	Poor
	Simple coacervation [97]	Versatile and flexible operation	Agglomeration	Poor	Short	Poor
	Complex coacervation [99]	Effective management of the size of the particles	It is challenging to increase the scale of particle agglomeration	Poor	Short	Poor