The article presents selected types of phase change materials (PCM) and their properties in terms of applications in construction and concrete technology. The purpose of using PCM is to allow the technological barrier to be exceeded in hot and dry climate conditions, enabling the construction of non-cracking concrete structures. Methodology of the multi-criteria decision-making process with the use of a relatively newdecision-making tool in construction – the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) is presented. Theoretical aspects of the method and an example of its practical use for the selection of the best material variant and concrete care method in the dry Syrian climate are presented. The conclusions resulting from the presented article concern two areas, i.e. the advisability of using phase change materials for temperature regulation in the maturing fresh concrete in dry climate conditions and the attractiveness of the AHP method justifying the advisability of choosing the maintenance methods in such conditions.

This study provides a simple and effective decision-making method to choose the best phase-change material for different energy storage applications. Three case studies are provided to demonstrate the proposed decision-making method. The first case study addresses the problem of best phase-change material selection for a domestic water heating latent heat storage system by considering 15 different phase-change materials and 8 selection attributes; the second case study addresses the problem of selecting the best phase-change material for a triple tube heat exchanger unit by considering 12 different phase-change materials and 5 selection attributes; the third case study addresses the problem of best phase-change material selection for latent heat thermal energy storage within the walls of Trombe to enhance performance considering 11 phase-change materials and 4 selection attributes. The results of the proposed decision-making method are compared with those of other well-known multi-attribute decision-making methods. The proposed method is shown to be simple to implement, providing a logical way for allocating weights to the selection attributes and adaptable to phase-change material selection problems in different energy storage contexts.