Experimental Study on the Strengthen Heat Transfer Performance of PCM by Active Stirring

Yanjun Zhang, Shuli Liu, Liu Yang, Xiue Yang, Yongliang Shen and Xiaojing Han
Additional contact information
Yanjun Zhang: School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
Shuli Liu: School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
Liu Yang: School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
Xiue Yang: School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
Yongliang Shen: School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
Xiaojing Han: School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 9, 1-16

Abstract: Latent heat storage has higher energy density, but most phase change materials (PCMs) have low thermal conductivity. Current research focuses on conduction dominated heat transfer mechanism to increase the heat transfer performance. However, convection also has important effects on promoting PCM melting and solidification processes. Therefore, an active stirring method with conduction dominated heat transfer mechanism was studied. A shell storage with stirrer inside was constructed and tested. Paraffin was selected as the PCM; the heat transfer fluid (HTF) was water. The results show that average charging rate increased by 32.23 J/s than that without stirring, and the average discharging rate increased by 47.39 J/s. Completion time for charging/discharging with stirring was shortened by 9.61% and 48.61% than that without stirring. In the charging process, the average power of motor was 16.08 W, and the average discharging rate was greater than 500 J/s, accounting for less than 3.2%. In the discharging process, the average power consumption of the motor accounted for less than 5.2% of the discharging rate. It may be considered that convection dominated heat transfer mechanism can effectively improve phase-change heat transfer performance with lower active power consumption

Keywords: phase change; convection; stirring; heat transfer; latent heat (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/9/2238/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/9/2238/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:9:p:2238-:d:353640

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().