Encapsulated phase change material under cyclic pulsed heat load

Abstract

The objective of this work is to investigate numerically a storage system formed by a cylindrical tank which is randomly packed with spheres having uniform sizes and encapsulating paraffin as phase change material (PCM). The packed bed is tested for various complex input temperature signals of the working fluid as well as for different internal layouts. A stochastic differential Langevin equation is used to add some randomness in the sinusoidal inlet working fluid temperature signal. The results obtained put into evidence the noticeable sensitivity of the bed response to the adjunction of such a low amplitude stochastic signal. The results obtained for a multi-slab configuration indicate also that it is possible to maximise the energy stored under a latent form by properly selecting and ordering the different PCM’s in the bed.