Heat transfer enhancement in latent heat thermal energy storage system using fins for solar thermal power plant

Abstract

Paper presented to the 3rd Southern African Solar Energy Conference, South Africa, 11-13 May, 2015.

Thermal energy storage is essential for the solar thermal power plant for the continuous generation of electricity which may be interrupted due to the intermittent nature of solar radiation. In this context, phase change materials (PCMs) can be used as the storage materials because of their high energy density and the ability to store more energy compared to sensible material with a small temperature difference. However, most of the PCMs possess very low thermal conductivity (~0.2–0.5 W/m-k), which severely affects the thermal performance of the storage system. Therefore, it becomes important to improve the effective thermal conductivity of PCMs. In the present study, fin is used as a thermal conductivity enhancer (TCE) to augment heat transfer in PCM. The study numerically investigates the thermal performance of the storage system during melting and solidification with and without PCM. The enthalpy technique is adopted for modeling convection- diffusion phase change in the storage system.