Paper presented to the 10th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Florida, 14-16 July 2014.
The discrepancy between energy supply and demand can be
overcome by the implementation of a proper energy storage
system. The latent heat thermal energy storage employing a
PCM is the most effective way of the thermal energy storage
due to its advantages of high energy storage density and its
isothermal operating characteristics during solidification and
melting processes. Here high conductivity porosity materialgraphite
foam is proposed to enhance the phase change
materials (PCM), paraffin, in order to solve the problem of its
low conductivity in the latent heat storage exchanger (LHSE).
The LHSE suggested is like shell-and-tube heat exchanger,
which HTF (water) is flowing in the tube while
paraffin/graphite foam is in the shell side. And two-dimensional
numerical investigations are conducted to predict the heat
transfer performance of the PCM/graphite foam for LHSE by
CFD software. The results show that graphite foam can
improve heat transfer rate effectively, and a series of numerical
calculations have been done in order to analyze the influence of
several HTF operating conditions on the melting process of the
paraffin/ graphite foam in LHSE, which will provide guidelines
of thermal performance and design optimization for LHSE.
