Solidification performance of heat exchanger with tree-shaped fins

Jiayi Zheng, Jing Wang, Taotao Chen and Yanshun Yu

Renewable Energy, 2020, vol. 150, issue C, 1098-1107

Abstract: Tree-shaped fin exhibits an excellent performance in balancing the strong and weak heat flow in latent heat exchangers, which renders higher solidification efficiency and more uniform temperature distribution. Based on the enthalpy-porosity method, a transient model of the solidification heat transfer in the heat exchangers with five tree-shaped fins are established and numerically analysed. The solidification behaviours of the phase change material (PCM), including liquid fraction and temperature evolution, in tree-shaped heat exchanger are investigated and compared with corresponding ones. The results indicate that the tree-shaped fin introduces more uniform solidification front and yield a higher solid fraction. Compared with the traditional longitudinal fins, the efficiency of heat exchanger with four-level tree-shaped fins increases by 53%. In terms of solidification efficiency, the tree-shaped fin configuration with four-level is considered as the optimal fin configuration. The initial temperature difference and the thermal conductivity of fins largely determine the solidification trend of the PCM in the heat exchanger. Compared with the width ratio, the heat exchanger with larger length ratio stores more energy during the phase change process.

Keywords: Solidification; Tree-shaped; Fin; Optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148119315824
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:150:y:2020:i:c:p:1098-1107

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2019.10.091

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 ().