What is it about?
Latent heat storage represents a promising technique to achieve net zero energy buildings. This work investigates the behaviour of Phase Change Material (PCM) inside a rectangular enclosure, which represents the geometry of a latent heat storage system. The left side of the unit is exposed to a constant temperature (Th), while the other three walls are exposed to convection heat transfer boundary condition [h= 5, 10, and 15 W/(m2 K)] and different ambient temperatures (Th = 297o and 307o K). The ambient temperatures were selected to be at/above the melting temperature of the studied PCM (coconut oil). To study the melting process of the PCM, the continuity, Navier-Stokes and energy equation were used. The Navier-Stokes equations were modified using the Carman-Kozeny relation. The finite element method was utilized to produce numerical results. The results are presented in terms of flow and thermal fields, Nusselt number (Nu), and the melt fraction (MF) of the PCM.
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Why is it important?
Our findings show that, when Tenf = Tm, the melting rate of the PCM slows down with increasing the convection heat transfer coefficient. While the melting rate accelerates with increasing the convection heat transfer coefficient when Tenf> Tm.
Perspectives
Our study expands studying a latent heat thermal storage. Investigating the effect of convection heat transfer as a boundary condition has not been studied in such details. I hope you find our work helpful.
Manar Al-Jethelah
Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Tikrit University, Tikrit, Iraq
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Effect of convection heat transfer on thermal energy storage unit, Open Physics, December 2018, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1515/phys-2018-0108.
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