Experimental and numerical investigation on the charging and discharging process of a cold energy storage for space cooling of buildings

Y. Ma, Yushan Tao, D.L. Deng, Y. Wang and J.Y. Tu

Renewable Energy, 2024, vol. 222, issue C

Abstract: To address the current issue of the difficulty to use the hot outdoor environment during summer nights to provide coolness for phase change materials (PCM) and thus reduce building energy consumption in hot summer areas, a novel cold energy storage unit has been proposed. It replaces the hot outdoor environment with other free or cheap cold sources. An experimental setup is built to investigate the cold storage and release performance of the PCM storage unit. Later, the well-validated numerical model is conducted to further explore thermal performance of the PCM storage unit. The numerical result indicates that the cold storage process can be completed from 64.33 min to 96.56 min when the water inlet temperature varies from 10 °C to 16 °C. Further, during the cold release process, the PCM storage unit can reduce the temperature of the hot air by a maximum of about 8–12 °C when the air inlet temperature ranges from 32 °C to 38 °C. The cold release efficiency is varied between 81.65 % and 96.44 %. In conclusion, the findings provide a promising way for cold storage and space cooling of buildings in hot summer areas through the cold energy storage unit.

Keywords: Cold storage; Phase change material; Space cooling; Cheap cold sources; Thermal performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148124000399
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:222:y:2024:i:c:s0960148124000399

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2024.119974

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 ().