Melting process investigation of phase change materials in a shell and tube heat exchanger enhanced with heat pipe

A. Ebrahimi, M.J. Hosseini, A.A. Ranjbar, M. Rahimi and R. Bahrampoury

Renewable Energy, 2019, vol. 138, issue C, 378-394

Abstract: In this study, latent heat storage enhanced with heat pipes is examined. The hot fluid carrying tubes are U shaped to improve heat transfer specifications. The effect of the number of the tubes as well as the angle of the tubes’ plates are analyzed which necessitates the examination of at least thirteen models. RT-35 is applied as the phase change material and water as the hot heat transfer fluid (HTF) flows through the U-shaped tube. The enthalpy-porosity is applied to consider phase change within the model. Liquid fraction, phase change material temperature, heat flux, the heat input of the heat pipe and the temperature differences between the HTF inlet and outlet are described for the studied cases. Results indicate that by locating the heat pipe around the single pipe heat storage system, the melting time reduces up to 91%. It is also observed that for the tube plant angle of 30°, by increasing the number of HTF tubes to two and three, the melting time reduces up to 12%. While the melting times for the double-tube and triple-tube cases are almost the same. This reduction for double-pipe of 90° plate angle is 17% and for the triple-pipe of the same case is 24%. As the angle of the HTF plate rises the melting time reduces.

Keywords: Phase change material; Heat exchanger; Thermal energy storage; Heat pipe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148119301235
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:138:y:2019:i:c:p:378-394

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2019.01.110

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 ().