Systematic investigations on charging/discharging performances improvement of phase change materials by structured network fins

Benli Peng, Wenlong Sheng, Zhengyu He, Hong Wang, Fengmin Su and Shikuan Wang

Energy, 2022, vol. 242, issue C

Abstract: Improving the effectiveness of solar energy utilization and waste heat recovery by ameliorating charging/discharging performances of latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) unit, is essential to reduce fossil fuel consumption thus achieve the goal of carbon neutralization. Structured network fins are developed to improve charging/discharging performances of paraffin wax-based LHTES unit. Simulations are conducted by integrating enthalpy-porosity method and Ansys Fluent software package. Influences of horizontal fin number nh and distance d between bottom horizontal fin and bottom wall of enclosure on charging/discharging performances are discussed. Results illustrate that when nh increases from one to six, the maximum enhancement factor for charging approaches to 1.6921 but it decreases to 1.0590 when nh increases from six to ten. The corresponding maximum enhancement factors for discharging are 10.5571 and 1.0382, respectively. An appropriate nh exists. Moreover, an optimum d exists when nh ≤ 3 for charging and when nh ≤ 6 for discharging. Charging/discharging rates are further enhanced by 10.38% and 13.84% respectively through optimizing d. When nh > 3 for charging and nh > 6 for discharging, a smaller d is more profitable. Results suggest nh = 6 and d ≤ 3 mm are appropriate to achieve satisfactory enhancements for charging/discharging performances of paraffin wax-based LHTES simultaneously and introduce minimum extra manufacture complexity.

Keywords: Phase change materials; Charging/discharging performances enhancement; Structured network fins; Enthalpy-porosity method; Numerical simulations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544221032126
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:242:y:2022:i:c:s0360544221032126

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2021.122963

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().