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5 AUTHORS, INCLUDING:
R. Velraj
Klemens Schwarzer
Fachhochschule Aachen
SEE PROFILE
SEE PROFILE
Pergamon
PII:
AbstractCommercial acceptance and the economics of solar thermal technologies are tied to the design and
development of efficient, cost-effective thermal storage systems. Thermal storage units that utilize latent heat
storage materials have received greater attention in the recent years because of their large heat storage capacity
and their isothermal behavior during the charging and discharging processes. One major issue that needs to be
addressed is that most phase-change materials (PCM) with high energy storage density have an unacceptably
low thermal conductivity and hence heat transfer enhancement techniques are required for any latent heat
thermal storage (LHTS) applications. In the present paper the various heat transfer enhancement methods for
LHTS systems are discussed. Three different experiments to augment heat transfer were conducted and the
findings are reported. 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. INTRODUCTION
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longitudinal fins inside a cylindrical vertical storage tube containing paraffin. In the second method, the tube is filled with lessing rings of 1 cm
diameter which are commonly used in the chemical reactors to enhance the surface contact, and
the molten paraffin is poured into the tube. These
lessing rings are made of steel and have a thinwalled hollow cylindrical structure with a partition. Without partition these rings are known as
Raschig-rings. A photographic view of the lessing
rings is shown in Fig. 2. The molten paraffin
occupies 80% of the storage volume. In the third
method a very small amount of water is poured
into the tube. Molten paraffin is then added and
the tube is evacuated by a vacuum pump. The
vacuum is maintained such that the saturation
temperature of the water inside the tube is nearly
equal to the phase change temperature of the
PCM. The intention is to create steam bubbles
inside the PCM during the phase change that
would promote the heat transfer.
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was used. Both paraffin have the same thermophysical properties except for the phase change
temperature. RT 60 has a phase change temperature range of 58 to 608C and RT 58 has a phase
change range of 58 to 598C. Table 1 summarizes
the thermophysical properties of paraffin RT 58
and RT 60.
Value
214.4 kJ kg 21
900 J kg 21 K 21
0.2 W m 21 K 21
850 kg m 23
775 kg m 23
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R. Velraj et al.
Fig. 5. Experimental and predicted temperature variation within the paraffin for the tube with fin at four thermocouple locations
shown in Fig. 1(b).
obtained from the numerical model. The theoretical and the experimental curves are in rather
close agreement with each other, except that in
the theoretical curves, the rate of temperature drop
is slower during phase change and faster after
phase change is completed at any location whereas in the experimental curves, there is not much
change in the rate of temperature drop even after
the lower limit of the phase change temperature
range is reached. This could be due to the
solidified paraffin, that may still have some
amount of latent heat even after the lower limit of
the phase change temperature range is reached.
This implies that the phase transition temperature
range is actually wider than that specified by the
manufacturer. This fact has also been observed by
Abhat (1983) for most of the paraffin. However,
the major phase change takes place within the
specified temperature range. This shift of a small
amount of latent heat for a short range below the
lower limit of the phase change temperature range
is also useful from the application point of view.
This reduces the sub-cooling of the solidified
layer and makes it possible to extract the energy
at nearly constant temperature even during the
solidification of the paraffin at the center of the
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R. Velraj et al.
without proportionate reduction in time for complete solidification. However, the time factor
which is defined as the ratio of time for complete
solidification with heat transfer enhancement to
that of plain tube configuration, depends on the
diameter of the tube for the lessing ring configuration. The time factor in this case decreases with
increase in diameter of the tube. With the fin
configuration, it was observed from the numerical
runs that the time factor remains more or less
unchanged for a fixed number of fins irrespective
of the diameter of the tube. The figure also shows
the heat stored which represents the amount of
latent heat that can be stored per unit meter length
in a tube with 5.4-cm inner diameter with paraffin
RT 60 as PCM. In the plain tube configuration
490 kJ of energy can be stored per meter tube
length and with fins and lessing ring configurations the reduction in energy stored is 7 and 20%
respectively.
In a LHTS system the total resistance to the
heat flow is the sum of convective resistance on
the tube surface and the conductive resistance of
solidified PCM. During the extraction of heat
from the system, as the solidification proceeds,
the conductive resistance offered by the PCM
increases whereas the convective resistance is
Fig. 8. Comparison of total solidification time and total quantity of heat stored for different configuration.
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5. CONCLUSION
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