Performance Evaluation of Coupled Thermal Enhancement through Novel Wire-Wound Fins Design and Graphene Nano-Platelets in Shell-and-Tube Latent Heat Storage System

Zakir Khan and Zulfiqar Ahmad Khan
Additional contact information
Zakir Khan: NanoCorr, Energy and Modelling (NCEM) Research Group, Department of Design & Engineering, Bournemouth University, Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow, Poole, Dorset BH12 5BB, UK
Zulfiqar Ahmad Khan: NanoCorr, Energy and Modelling (NCEM) Research Group, Department of Design & Engineering, Bournemouth University, Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow, Poole, Dorset BH12 5BB, UK

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 13, 1-21

Abstract: Technological development in latent heat storage (LHS) systems is essential for energy security and energy management for both renewable and non-renewable sources. In this article, numerical analyses on a shell-and-tube-based LHS system with coupled thermal enhancement through extended fins and nano-additives are conducted to propose optimal combinations for guaranteed higher discharging rate, enthalpy capacity and thermal distribution. Transient numerical simulations of fourteen scenarios with varied combinations are investigated in three-dimensional computational models. The shell-and-tube includes paraffin as phase change material (PCM), longitudinal, radial and wire-wound fins and graphene nano-platelets (GNP) as extended fins and nano-additives, respectively. The extended fins have demonstrated better effectiveness than nano-additives. For instance, the discharging durations for paraffin with longitudinal, radial and wire-wound fins are shortened by 88.76%, 95.13% and 96.44% as compared to 39.33% for paraffin with 2.5% GNP. The combined strengths of extended fins and nano-additives have indicated further enhancement in neutralising the insulative resistance and stratification of paraffin. However, the increase in volume fraction from 1% to 3% and 5% is rather detrimental to the total enthalpy capacity. Hence, the novel designed wire-wound fins with both base paraffin and paraffin with 1% GNP are proposed as optimal candidates owing to their significantly higher heat transfer potentials. The proposed novel designed configuration can retrieve 11.15 MJ of thermal enthalpy in 1.08 h as compared to 44.5 h for paraffin in a conventional shell-and-tube without fins. In addition, the proposed novel designed LHS systems have prolonged service life with zero maintenance and flexible scalability to meet both medium and large-scale energy storage demands.

Keywords: thermal energy storage (TES); latent heat storage (LHS); graphene nano-platelets; solidification; heat transfer enhancement; shell-and-tube heat exchanger (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: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/13/3743/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/13/3743/ (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:14:y:2021:i:13:p:3743-:d:579974

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 ().