A series of poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO)/lauric acid blends with different compositions has been prepared and characterised by differential scanning calorimetry (DSQ in dynamic mode. It has been found that the enthalpy of melting and crystallisation reaches its highest value for PEO/lauric acid blend (1:1, w/w) which makes this system a promising candidate for thermal energy storage applications. Further studies by step-scan alternating (SSA)-DSC revealed that an increase of the temperature step causes that the average total heating rate is also increasing and the heat flow is characterised by higher values. Reversing component of the heat flow during melting reaches lowest values at highest step (step= 1 degrees) when the re-crystallisation of PEO is hindered. An increase of step generally leads to an increase of the number of non-equilibrium effects and facilitates the activation of kinetic non-reversing processes, hindering the overall crystallisation of PEO. For lauric acid, due to facile crystallisation and self-association, formation of ordered regular structures takes place faster and is influenced by non-reversing processes in higher proportion. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.