Enhancement of solidification of phase change materials around finned tubes

Abstract

Phase change materials (PCMs) are the most attractive thermal energy storage media due to their reduced storage volume and isothermal behavior during charging and discharging processes. Their main drawback is the slow thermal response due to the low thermal conductivity. Various methods for PCM thermal conductivity enhancement have been investigated by many researchers. The present study has the objective of investigating fins for enhancing thermal conductivity of PCM and meliorate their thermal performance. The formulated model for the horizontal radial finned tube is based on pure conduction in the PCM and numerically treated by finite difference and Alternating Direction Implicit (ADI) formulation. The numerical code is optimized and the numerical predictions were validated against experimental results. Additional numerical and experimental measurements were realized to investigate the effects of the cooling fluid temperature, its mass flow rate, diameter, thickness and material of the fin on the interface velocity, solidified mass and the time for complete solidification.