Phase change material with graphite foam for applications in high-temperature latent heat storage systems of concentrated solar power plants
Weihuan Zhao,
David M. France,
Wenhua Yu,
Taeil Kim and
Dileep Singh
Renewable Energy, 2014, vol. 69, issue C, 134-146
Abstract:
A high-temperature latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) system was analyzed for applications to concentrated solar power (CSP) plants (utilizing steam at ∼610 °C) for large-scale electricity generation. Magnesium chloride was selected as the phase change material (PCM) for the latent heat storage because of its high melting point (714 °C). Because the thermal conductivities of most salt materials are very low, usually less than 1 W/m K, graphite foam was applied as an additive to considerably enhance the overall thermal conductivity of the resulting graphite foam–PCM combination in the LHTES system. The heat transfer performance and the exergy efficiency in the graphite foam–MgCl2 LHTES system were considered for the design and optimization of the storage system. Three-dimensional (3-D) heat transfer simulations were conducted for the storage system using commercial software COMSOL. Three groups of analyses were performed for an LHTES system: using PCM alone without graphite foam, using average material properties for graphite foam–PCM combination, and using anisotropic thermal conductivity and temperature-dependent material properties for graphite foam–PCM. Results presented show that the graphite foam can help to significantly improve the heat transfer performance as well as the exergy efficiency in the LHTES system. They also show the effects of the anisotropic thermal conductivity and indicate capital cost savings for a CSP electric power plant by reducing the number of heat transfer fluid (HTF) pipes in the LHTES tank by a factor of eight.
Keywords: Concentrated solar power; Graphite foam–MgCl2 combination; Latent heat thermal energy storage; Three-dimensional heat transfer simulation; Exergy efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148114001773
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:renene:v:69:y:2014:i:c:p:134-146
DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2014.03.031
Access Statistics for this article
Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides
More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu (repec@elsevier.com).