Thermo-Economic Performance Analysis of Modified Latent Heat Storage System for Residential Heating

Xinyu Gao, Ze Li, Jiabang Yu, Jiayi Gao, Xiaohu Yang () and Bengt Sundén ()
Additional contact information
Xinyu Gao: Institute of the Building Environment & Sustainability Technology, School of Human Settlements and Civil Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Ze Li: Institute of the Building Environment & Sustainability Technology, School of Human Settlements and Civil Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Jiabang Yu: China Northwest Architecture Design and Research Institute, Co., Ltd., Xi’an 710077, China
Jiayi Gao: Institute of the Building Environment & Sustainability Technology, School of Human Settlements and Civil Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Xiaohu Yang: Institute of the Building Environment & Sustainability Technology, School of Human Settlements and Civil Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Bengt Sundén: Department of Energy Sciences, Lund University, 22100 Lund, Sweden

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 19, 1-19

Abstract: Solar energy is a sustainable source that can be effectively utilized to address winter heating challenges in buildings. To ensure the efficient application of solar energy for heating purposes and to maintain reliable performance of the heating system, the integration of phase-change materials (PCMs) in thermal energy storage (TES) systems has emerged as a crucial auxiliary approach. This study focuses on the design and simulation of four TES structures: smooth, finned, metallic foam, and metallic foam-finned tubes. It explores their thermal characteristics, such as complete melting time and heat flux, under various flow conditions. Additionally, a residential building in Xi’an is selected as the object, where the proposed solar energy phase-change TES system is employed to meet the heating demand. Economic indicators, including initial investment and investment payback period, are estimated using a static evaluation method. The results highlight that the complete melting time of the TES unit with a metallic foam-finned tube is 4800 s, which is 88.3% less than the smooth tube. Finally, based on the actual project, it is determined that the metallic foam-finned heating system, with an HTF flow rate of 0.25 m/s, requires the fewest TES devices (914) and has a payback period of 13 months.

Keywords: thermal energy storage; porous medium; solar heating; thermo-economic performance (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: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/19/6915/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/19/6915/ (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:16:y:2023:i:19:p:6915-:d:1252082

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 ().