Effect of flow rate of heat transfer fluid on the charging behaviour of phase change material in a hot water tank

Author(s):  
Thet Swe Aye Naing ◽  
Mi Sandar Mon ◽  
Soe Soe Nu
2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3 Part B) ◽  
pp. 1981-1988 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramalingam Senthil

The effect of fin profile on melting of phase change material (PCM) is presented. The test section contains an acrylic tube of 50 mm outer diameter and a copper tube of 16 mm outer diameter and a length of 1000 mm each. Both tubes are kept coaxially. The heat transfer fluid (HTF) flows through the copper tube. The PCM is paraffin wax and filled in the annular region. The considered fin profiles are the uniform and variable fin heights of circular, triangular and elliptical profiles. Fins are fixed on the HTF tube and protruded into the PCM. The total fin surface area is maintained same among the fin profiles and the fin arrangements. The one-third of the storage is provided with increasing fin height of 2- 3 mm to melt the settled solid PCM. The hot and cold water is used to charge and discharge the PCM, respectively. Experiments are performed by the hot and cold-water inlet temperatures of 70 ?C and 28 ?C at a flow rate of 0.5 kg per minute. A faster and effective heat transfer from HTF to PCM and vice-versa is investigated. The variable elliptical fins showed faster charging and discharging by 25% and 20%, respectively, than the variable circular fins. The variable elliptical fins showed faster charging and discharging by 11.8% and 11% than the variable triangular fins. The charging and discharging efficiency of 80% and 74% are observed for the elliptical fin profiles.


2017 ◽  
Vol 139 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guansheng Chen ◽  
Nanshuo Li ◽  
Huanhuan Xiang ◽  
Fan Li

It is well known that attaching fins on the tubes surfaces can enhance the heat transfer into and out from the phase change materials (PCMs). This paper presents the results of an experimental study on the thermal characteristics of finned coil latent heat storage unit (LHSU) using paraffin as the phase change material (PCM). The paraffin LHSU is a rectangular cube consists of continuous horizontal multibended tubes attached vertical fins at the pitches of 2.5, 5.0, and 7.5 mm that creates the heat transfer surface. The shell side along with the space around the tubes and fins is filled with the material RT54 allocated to store energy of water, which flows inside the tubes as heat transfer fluid (HTF). The measurement is carried out under four different water flow rates: 1.01, 1.30, 1.50, and 1.70 L/min in the charging and discharging process, respectively. The temperature of paraffin and water, charging and discharging wattage, and heat transfer coefficient are plotted in relation to the working time and water flow rate.


Nanomaterials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1425
Author(s):  
Tarek Bouzennada ◽  
Farid Mechighel ◽  
Kaouther Ghachem ◽  
Lioua Kolsi

A 2D-symmetric numerical study of a new design of Nano-Enhanced Phase change material (NEPCM)-filled enclosure is presented in this paper. The enclosure is equipped with an inner tube allowing the circulation of the heat transfer fluid (HTF); n-Octadecane is chosen as phase change material (PCM). Comsol-Multiphysics commercial code was used to solve the governing equations. This study has been performed to examine the heat distribution and melting rate under the influence of the inner-tube position and the concentration of the nanoparticles dispersed in the PCM. The inner tube was located at three different vertical positions and the nanoparticle concentration was varied from 0 to 0.06. The results revealed that both heat transfer/melting rates are improved when the inner tube is located at the bottom region of the enclosure and by increasing the concentration of the nanoparticles. The addition of the nanoparticles enhances the heat transfer due to the considerable increase in conductivity. On the other hand, by placing the tube in the bottom area of the enclosure, the liquid PCM gets a wider space, allowing the intensification of the natural convection.


Author(s):  
A. Castell ◽  
C. Sole´ ◽  
M. Medrano ◽  
M. Nogue´s ◽  
L. F. Cabeza

Most of the storage systems available on the market use water as storage medium. Enhancing the storage performance is necessary to increase the performance of most systems. The stratification phenomenon is employed to improve the efficiency of storage tanks. Heat at an intermediate temperature, not high enough to heat up the top layer, can still be used to heat the lower, colder layers. There are a lot of parameters to study the stratification in a water tank such as the Mix Number and the Richardson Number among others. The idea studied here was to use these stratification parameters to compare two tanks with the same dimensions during charging and discharging processes. One of them is a traditional water tank and the other is a PCM-water (a water tank with a Phase Change Material). A PCM is good because it has high energy density if there is a small temperature change, since then the latent heat is much larger than the sensible heat. On the other hand, the temperature change in the top layer of a hot water store with stratification is usually small as it is held as close as possible at or above the temperature for usage. In the system studied the Phase Change Material is placed at the top of the tank, therefore the advantages of the stratification still remain. The aim of this work is to demonstrate that the use of PCM in the upper part of a water tank holds or improves the benefit of the stratification phenomenon.


2019 ◽  
Vol 116 ◽  
pp. 00038 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria K. Koukou ◽  
Michail Gr. Vrachopoulos ◽  
George Dogkas ◽  
Christos Pagkalos ◽  
Kostas Lymperis ◽  
...  

A prototype Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage (LHTES) unit has been designed, constructed, and experimentally analysed for its thermal storage performance under different operational conditions considering heating application and exploiting solar and geothermal energy. The system consists of a rectangular tank filled with Phase Change Material (PCM) and a finned tube staggered Heat Exchanger (HE) while water is used as Heat Transfer Fluid (HTF). Different HTF inlet temperatures and flow rates were tested to find out their effects on LHTES performance. Thermal quantities such as HTF outlet temperature, heat transfer rate, stored energy, were evaluated as a function of the conditions studied. Two commercial organic PCMs were tested A44 and A46. Results indicate that A44 is more efficient during the charging period, taking into account the two energy sources, solar and heat pump. During the discharging process, it exhibits higher storage capacity than A46. Concluding, the developed methodology can be applied to study different PCMs and building applications.


2009 ◽  
Vol 131 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarada Kuravi ◽  
Krishna M. Kota ◽  
Jianhua Du ◽  
Louis C. Chow

Microchannels are used in applications where large amount of heat is produced. Phase change material (PCM) slurries can be used as a heat transfer fluid in microchannels as they provide increased heat capacity during the melting of phase change material. For the present numerical investigation, performance of a nano-encapsulated phase change material slurry in a manifold microchannel heat sink was analyzed. The slurry was modeled as a bulk fluid with varying specific heat. The temperature field inside the channel wall is solved three dimensionally and is coupled with the three dimensional velocity and temperature fields of the fluid. The model includes the microchannel fin or wall effect, axial conduction along the length of the channel, developing flow of the fluid and not all these features were included in previous numerical investigations. Influence of parameters such as particle concentration, inlet temperature, melting range of the PCM, and heat flux is investigated, and the results are compared with the pure single phase fluid.


Author(s):  
Nikhil Dhiman ◽  
Jeet Shah ◽  
Dereje Agonafer ◽  
Naveen Kannan ◽  
James Hoverson ◽  
...  

The ever increasing information technology heat load and data center cooling energy are the main reasons to investigate the performance of microencapsulated phase change slurry over other heat transfer fluids. Microencapsulated phase change slurry is dispersion where the phase change material, microencapsulated by a polymeric capsule, is dispersed in water. Compared to water, these new fluids have a higher heat capacity during phase change and a possible enhancement, as a result of this phase change, in the heat transfer phenomenon. The composition of phase change material used in slurry greatly affects its efficiency, If not selected properly it can cause serious damage, e.g. agglomeration and clogging of pipes. The main objective of this work is to develop standalone pumpable microencapsulated phase change slurry that is able to withstand shear stresses of the pump and other course surfaces of pipe and pipe joints. In this study, experiments were performed, to determine performance of microencapsulated phase change slurry over conventional heat transfer fluids. After certain pumping cycles, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) has been done to analyze the conditions of shell material of polymeric capsule. Results obtained from SEM show that centrifugal pump is compatible with mPCM particle size upto 3 μm. It is true that selected mPCS have shown better performance over water in hot water bath in case of thermal storage. Also, closed loop final testing has shown that heat flux is about 2–3 times higher with mPCS than water.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (6 Part B) ◽  
pp. 2803-2812 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramalingam Senthil ◽  
Marimuthu Cheralathan

In this work, the use of phase change material in the circular tank solar receiver is proposed for a 16 m2 Scheffler parabolic dish solar concentrator to improve the heat transfer in the receiver. Magnesium chloride hexahydrate with melting temperature of 117?C is selected as the phase change material in the annular space of the receiver with rectangular fins inside the phase change material. Experimental work is carried out to analyze heat transfer from the receiver to heat transfer fluid with and without phase change material in the inner periphery. Energy and exergy efficiency are determined from the measurements of solar radiation intensity, receiver temperature, surroundings temperature, heat transfer fluid inlet and outlet temperatures, storage tank temperature, and wind speed. The experiments were conducted in SRM University, Chennai, India (latitude: 13? 5? N, longitude: 80?16? E) in April 2014. Use of phase change material in receiver periphery increased energy efficiency by 5.62%, exergy efficiency by 12.8% and decreased time to reach the boiling point of water by 20% when compared with the receiver without phase change material.


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