Numerical thermal performance investigation of a latent heat storage prototype toward effective use in residential heating systems

Tianhao Xu, Emma Nyholm Humire, Justin Ning-Wei Chiu and Samer Sawalha

Applied Energy, 2020, vol. 278, issue C, No S030626192031134X

Abstract: Latent heat thermal energy storage has been receiving increasing interests in residential heating applications. In this paper, a numerical heat transfer model was built with finite element method for a cylindrically encapsulated latent heat storage prototype and used for investigating its thermal performance optimization measures. The model was validated against four sets of experimental results for both charge and discharge, as the difference in accumulated storage capacity between simulation and experiment is less than 4%. Transient storage inlet boundary conditions were set in simulation for discharge considering the thermal output from the coupled radiators. The results of the optimization analyses show that: 1) reducing the capsule diameter from 69 mm to 15 mm shortens the completion time of charge and discharge by up to 70%, however, at the expense of 23% decrease in total storage capacity; 2) using parabolic or linear time-increasing heat transfer fluid flowrate profiles than a time-constant one extends around twofold the useful discharge timespan; 3) increasing the storage vessel diameter from 0.6 m to 0.7 m and to 0.8 m prolongs the useful discharge timespan from 2 hrs to the recommended 3 hrs, though the further enlargement to 0.8 m results in a lower state of charge after 3 hrs due to increase in unexploited storage capacity. From the numerical optimization study, we proposed a storage design adjustment of using 15 mm-diameter phase change material capsules in a 0.7 m-diameter cylindrical storage vessel, coupled with a parabolic flow strategy, to improve the storage on-peak discharging performance.

Keywords: Phase change material; Heat transfer simulation; Thermal performance investigation; Residential heating system; Cylindrical encapsulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192031134X
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:appene:v:278:y:2020:i:c:s030626192031134x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115631

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

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