Abstract

The current experimental study is carried out to investigate the main parameters of Heat Transfer Fluid (HTF), which affects the performance of Thermal Energy Storage (TES). In this study, commercial Phase Change Material (PCM), PlusICE H190 is used to charge the system. The phase change temperature of the used PCM is started at 170oC and completed at 190°C. Thermal energy storage is a rectangular container which consists of a fin tube heat exchanger and the charged PCM. Fin tube heat exchanger is implemented in the construction of the system to compensate the limited thermal conductivity of the selected PCM (0.512 W/m. K ). Five thermocouples K-type are inserted in the domain of the PCM to measure the variations of temperature output with time at different depths. The results show that the inlet temperature (T_inlet) = 220°C, which is close enough to the phase change temperature (190°C) of the PCM has the highest energy performance. Also the results illustrates that the phase change region of the PCM is started at 170°C and completed at 190oC with a transitional appearance takes place over a varying temperature difference of 20°C and the average value of heating rate over phase change process remains constant at 0.75°C/min at a flow rate 5.2 kg/min. The results indicates that increasing the HTF mass flow rates leads to decrease the time needed to melt the PCM and influences the melting point to become at relatively lowered value, while in the solidification mode the time decreases as the mass flow rate increases.

Keywords:

Heat Transfer Fluid (HTF), melting/solidification, PlusICE H190, Phase Change Materials (PCMs), Thermal Energy Storage (TES), temperature gradient, transitional appearance,

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Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

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