IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v15y2022i21p8200-d962060.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Investigation on the Melting Performance of a Phase Change Material Based on a Shell-and-Tube Thermal Energy Storage Unit with a Rectangular Fin Configuration

Author

Listed:
  • Meng Yu

    (Special Equipment Safety Supervision Inspection Institute of Jiangsu Province, Nanjing 210036, China
    Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China)

  • Xiaowei Sun

    (Special Equipment Safety Supervision Inspection Institute of Jiangsu Province, Nanjing 210036, China)

  • Wenjuan Su

    (Special Equipment Safety Supervision Inspection Institute of Jiangsu Province, Nanjing 210036, China)

  • Defeng Li

    (Special Equipment Safety Supervision Inspection Institute of Jiangsu Province, Nanjing 210036, China)

  • Jun Shen

    (Special Equipment Safety Supervision Inspection Institute of Jiangsu Province, Nanjing 210036, China)

  • Xuejun Zhang

    (Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China)

  • Long Jiang

    (Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China)

Abstract

A case study on the melting performance of a shell-and-tube phase change material (PCM) thermal energy storage unit with a novel rectangular fin configuration is conducted in this paper. Paraffin wax and circulated water are employed as the PCM and heat transfer fluid (HTF), respectively. It can be observed that the melting performance could be significantly improved by using rectangular fins. Melting photographs demonstrate that the melting of the PCM is firstly dominated by heat conduction; then, the melting rate is improved further due to natural convection. Moreover, the results illustrate that the influence of the inlet HTF temperature on the melting performance is significantly greater than that of the inlet HTF flow rate. The liquid fraction of paraffin wax in the PCM unit with a higher inlet HTF temperature is always higher than that with a lower inlet HTF temperature at the same time. The total charging time is reduced by 62.38% and the average charging rate is increased by 165.51% when the inlet HTF temperature is increased from 57 °C to 68 °C. As a result, a higher value of the inlet HTF temperature and a lower value of the HTF flow rate are able to improve the energy efficiency of the PCM unit with a rectangular fin configuration.

Suggested Citation

  • Meng Yu & Xiaowei Sun & Wenjuan Su & Defeng Li & Jun Shen & Xuejun Zhang & Long Jiang, 2022. "Investigation on the Melting Performance of a Phase Change Material Based on a Shell-and-Tube Thermal Energy Storage Unit with a Rectangular Fin Configuration," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(21), pages 1-15, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:21:p:8200-:d:962060
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/21/8200/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/21/8200/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jiang, L. & Roskilly, A.P. & Wang, R.Z. & Wang, L.W. & Lu, Y.J., 2017. "Analysis on innovative modular sorption and resorption thermal cell for cold and heat cogeneration," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 204(C), pages 767-779.
    2. Yang, Xiaohu & Lu, Zhao & Bai, Qingsong & Zhang, Qunli & Jin, Liwen & Yan, Jinyue, 2017. "Thermal performance of a shell-and-tube latent heat thermal energy storage unit: Role of annular fins," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 558-570.
    3. Medrano, M. & Yilmaz, M.O. & Nogués, M. & Martorell, I. & Roca, Joan & Cabeza, Luisa F., 2009. "Experimental evaluation of commercial heat exchangers for use as PCM thermal storage systems," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 86(10), pages 2047-2055, October.
    4. Vogel, J. & Johnson, M., 2019. "Natural convection during melting in vertical finned tube latent thermal energy storage systems," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 246(C), pages 38-52.
    5. Amini, Amir & Miller, Jeremy & Jouhara, Hussam, 2017. "An investigation into the use of the heat pipe technology in thermal energy storage heat exchangers," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 163-172.
    6. Lin, Yaxue & Jia, Yuting & Alva, Guruprasad & Fang, Guiyin, 2018. "Review on thermal conductivity enhancement, thermal properties and applications of phase change materials in thermal energy storage," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 82(P3), pages 2730-2742.
    7. Gude, Veera Gnaneswar, 2015. "Energy storage for desalination processes powered by renewable energy and waste heat sources," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 877-898.
    8. Pathak, Saurabh & Jain, Komal & Kumar, Prashant & Wang, Xu & Pant, R.P., 2019. "Improved thermal performance of annular fin-shell tube storage system using magnetic fluid," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 239(C), pages 1524-1535.
    9. Seddegh, Saeid & Wang, Xiaolin & Joybari, Mahmood Mastani & Haghighat, Fariborz, 2017. "Investigation of the effect of geometric and operating parameters on thermal behavior of vertical shell-and-tube latent heat energy storage systems," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 69-82.
    10. Said, M.A. & Hassan, Hamdy, 2018. "Parametric study on the effect of using cold thermal storage energy of phase change material on the performance of air-conditioning unit," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 230(C), pages 1380-1402.
    11. David W. MacPhee & Mustafa Erguvan, 2020. "Thermodynamic Analysis of a High-Temperature Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage System," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(24), pages 1-19, December.
    12. Yang, Xiaohu & Yu, Jiabang & Guo, Zengxu & Jin, Liwen & He, Ya-Ling, 2019. "Role of porous metal foam on the heat transfer enhancement for a thermal energy storage tube," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 239(C), pages 142-156.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Augusto Cavargna & Luigi Mongibello & Marcello Iasiello & Nicola Bianco, 2023. "Analysis of a Phase Change Material-Based Condenser of a Low-Scale Refrigeration System," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(9), pages 1-24, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Beyne, W. & T'Jollyn, I. & Lecompte, S. & Cabeza, L.F. & De Paepe, M., 2023. "Standardised methods for the determination of key performance indicators for thermal energy storage heat exchangers," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    2. Du, Kun & Calautit, John & Eames, Philip & Wu, Yupeng, 2021. "A state-of-the-art review of the application of phase change materials (PCM) in Mobilized-Thermal Energy Storage (M-TES) for recovering low-temperature industrial waste heat (IWH) for distributed heat," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 1040-1057.
    3. Zhanjun Guo & Wu Zhou & Sen Liu & Zhangyang Kang & Rufei Tan, 2023. "Effects of Geometric Parameters and Heat-Transfer Fluid Injection Direction on Enhanced Phase-Change Energy Storage in Vertical Shell-and-Tube System," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(17), pages 1-21, August.
    4. Serge Nyallang Nyamsi & Ivan Tolj & Mykhaylo Lototskyy, 2019. "Metal Hydride Beds-Phase Change Materials: Dual Mode Thermal Energy Storage for Medium-High Temperature Industrial Waste Heat Recovery," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(20), pages 1-27, October.
    5. Chen, C.Q. & Diao, Y.H. & Zhao, Y.H. & Wang, Z.Y. & Liang, L. & Wang, T.Y. & An, Y., 2021. "Optimization of phase change thermal storage units/devices with multichannel flat tubes: A theoretical study," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 700-717.
    6. Kumar, Ashish & Saha, Sandip K., 2020. "Experimental and numerical study of latent heat thermal energy storage with high porosity metal matrix under intermittent heat loads," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 263(C).
    7. Bai, Zhang & Liu, Qibin & Gong, Liang & Lei, Jing, 2019. "Application of a mid-/low-temperature solar thermochemical technology in the distributed energy system with cooling, heating and power production," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 253(C), pages 1-1.
    8. Kasper, Lukas & Pernsteiner, Dominik & Schirrer, Alexander & Jakubek, Stefan & Hofmann, René, 2023. "Experimental characterization, parameter identification and numerical sensitivity analysis of a novel hybrid sensible/latent thermal energy storage prototype for industrial retrofit applications," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 344(C).
    9. Zhang, Jiangyun & Shao, Dan & Jiang, Liqin & Zhang, Guoqing & Wu, Hongwei & Day, Rodney & Jiang, Wenzhao, 2022. "Advanced thermal management system driven by phase change materials for power lithium-ion batteries: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    10. Chen, Xue & Li, Xiaolei & Xia, Xinlin & Sun, Chuang & Liu, Rongqiang, 2021. "Thermal storage analysis of a foam-filled PCM heat exchanger subjected to fluctuating flow conditions," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    11. Ding, Zhixiong & Wu, Wei & Leung, Michael, 2021. "Advanced/hybrid thermal energy storage technology: material, cycle, system and perspective," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    12. Xu, Huaqian & Zuo, Hongyang & Zeng, Kuo & Lu, Yongwen & Chi, Bowen & Flamant, Gilles & Yang, Haiping & Chen, Hanping, 2024. "Investigation of the modified Gaussian-based non-phase field method for numerical simulation of latent heat storage," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 288(C).
    13. Ewelina Radomska & Lukasz Mika & Karol Sztekler & Lukasz Lis, 2020. "The Impact of Heat Exchangers’ Constructions on the Melting and Solidification Time of Phase Change Materials," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-44, September.
    14. Yang, Xiaohu & Yu, Jiabang & Xiao, Tian & Hu, Zehuan & He, Ya-Ling, 2020. "Design and operating evaluation of a finned shell-and-tube thermal energy storage unit filled with metal foam," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 261(C).
    15. Wu, Shaofei & Yan, Ting & Kuai, Zihan & Pan, Weiguo, 2020. "Preparation and thermal property analysis of a novel phase change heat storage material," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 1057-1065.
    16. Liu, Zichu & Quan, Zhenhua & Zhao, Yaohua & Jing, Heran & Wang, Lincheng & Liu, Xin, 2022. "Numerical research on the solidification heat transfer characteristics of ice thermal storage device based on a compact multichannel flat tube-closed rectangular fin heat exchanger," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 239(PD).
    17. Evdoxia Paroutoglou & Peter Fojan & Leonid Gurevich & Simon Furbo & Jianhua Fan & Marc Medrano & Alireza Afshari, 2022. "A Numerical Parametric Study of a Double-Pipe LHTES Unit with PCM Encapsulated in the Annular Space," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(20), pages 1-16, October.
    18. Yao, Haichen & Liu, Xianglei & Luo, Qingyang & Xu, Qiao & Tian, Yang & Ren, Tianze & Zheng, Hangbin & Gao, Ke & Dang, Chunzhuo & Xuan, Yimin & Liu, Zhan & Yang, Xiaohu & Ding, Yulong, 2022. "Experimental and numerical investigations of solar charging performances of 3D porous skeleton based latent heat storage devices," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 320(C).
    19. Zhao, Jiaxin & Ma, Tao & Li, Zhenpeng & Song, Aotian, 2019. "Year-round performance analysis of a photovoltaic panel coupled with phase change material," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 245(C), pages 51-64.
    20. Liu, Yang & Zheng, Ruowei & Li, Ji, 2022. "High latent heat phase change materials (PCMs) with low melting temperature for thermal management and storage of electronic devices and power batteries: Critical review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:21:p:8200-:d:962060. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.