Analysis of Phase Change Material used as Thermal Energy Storage Unit in Catalytic Converter.

Abstract

Phase change Material(PCM) is widely used to heat storage applications. In this study PCM is used in the catalytic converter application to improve the performance of catalytic converter by maintaining the temperature above the light off temperature. Catalytic converter is inefficient at lower temperature or below the light off temperature the conversion efficiency is very low and practically it is zero. Using PCM conversion efficiency of catalytic converter is increased. PCM is placed above the substrate to absorb the heat from the exhaust gases which are leaving to the atmosphere in order to maintain the substrate temperature above the light off temperature. When the temperature is high at substrate then conversion of pollutants is better. PCM Store the heat by changing the phase from solid to liquid and return the heat to substrate by partial solidification. In this paper, performance of PCM (Mg70Zn24.9Al5.1) which is a eutectic alloy used for high temperature applications was investigated at various loading conditions by doing the simulation on catalytic converter for melting and solidification of PCM and validate the results with experimental work. The melting of PCM domain is simulated using ANSYS fluent 2019 R3 software. The assumptions used for the numerical study, methodology of the work and specification of software is also discussed in this paper. The contours of melting fraction of PCM at regular interval for different loading conditions (i.e. 0%, 50%, and 100% load) are represented for total melting period of the PCM.