OPTIMIZATION AND THERMAL PERFORMANCE INVESTIGATION OF CYLINDRICAL RODS FILLED WITH PCM MATERIAL USING CFD SIMULATION METHOD

Abstract

A phase-change material (PCM) thermal energy storage (TES) has been studied as part of a project to develop a solar-based room-heating system for extreme cold areas using ANSYS Fluent. The purpose of using a PCM thermal storage is to overcome the intermittency of solar and provide room heating during nighttime as a sustainable and clean solution. A computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model is developed for a cubical TES unit having an array of cylindrical rods of stainless steel filled with inorganic PCM as thermal storage media. Heat-transfer fluid (HTF) selected for this study is water. In the present study, the diameter of cylindrical rods is optimized by comparing the melting characteristics of PCM with three different diameters, and thermal performance of the selected option is investigated and discussed. ANSYS Fluent software is used for numerical modeling of a commercially available inorganic PCM material Save-HS48 (Pluss Advanced Technologies, India) and the results were validated using experimental data provided by the PCM manufacturer. 3D transient option with solidification and melting in Ansys Fluent software is selected for the investigation. A four-hour charging time is assumed for the numerical modeling and discharging for a particular case was studied with suitable assumptions for full-cycle analysis. Thermo-physical properties of Save-HS48 PCM are found to be suitable for solar room-heating application and effectiveness of all the cases simulated in the present study provides suitable results for further experimental study of a PCM-TES unit.