Experimental Investigation on Improving the Heat Transfer of Cascaded Thermal Storage System Using Different Fins

Abstract

The ever-increasing energy demand is the source of experimentation to explore different possibilities of producing higher energy and storing it for various needs. An experimental setup has been developed to study the heat transfer of cascaded thermal energy storage system using fins. Three different encapsulation materials copper, brass, and stainless steel are tried, and inside these encapsulations rectangular, annular, and pin fins are welded to increase the heat transfer area. Three different phase change materials namely d-mannitol, d-sorbitol, and paraffin wax are arranged inside the finned encapsulations. In this paper a detailed analysis is made with different encapsulations with rectangular, annular and pin fin, and is found to have the heat transfer as 4146.3 and 3991.4 kJ during charging and discharging conditions respectively for annular fin. The heat transfer rate is the highest one for annular fin in comparison to other types of pin and rectangular fins. Further, the efficiency of annular fins with copper encapsulation is found to be about 90% and while that of brass and stainless steel encapsulation are 88 and 85%, respectively. The results with annular fin analysis are completely presented in this research work.