Design Optimization of Thermal Energy Storage System

Abstract

Thermal energy storage system is necessary to improve the efficiency of solar thermal applications (STEA) and to eliminate the imbalance between energy supply and energy demand. Among the thermal energy storage devices, the latent heat storage device (LHTES) has received a lot of attention due to its high energy density per unit of mass / volume at almost constant temperatures. Although extensive research has been carried out in recent years, an integrated study of the design of the PCM heat exchanger is rare. This article presents a numerical and simulation study of the phase change process dominated by heat conduction in thermal storage units. Water as a heat transfer fluid (HTF) flows through the tube for the charging and discharging cycles and paraffin wax as phase change material (PCM) is filled in the shell. With the previous assumptions, we have designed and performed the simulation of the thermal energy storage system using the ANSYS software. An in-depth constant study is additionally administrated for various radii. After the simulation and analysis, we concluded that if the tube radius is exaggerated the heat transfer space also increased with reduces the time to charge and discharge the energy stored in the PCM.