Simulation of Heat Transfer during Paraffin And Gallium Melting and Solidification Processes Utilizing Star CCm+

Abstract

Energy storage systems are essential as the world works to minimize its dependency on fossil fuel energy for environmental and economic reasons. Because of their high capacity for latent heat storage. The numerical study of benchmark cases of solidification and melting was undertaken, and the results of these investigations are presented in this project. Numerical analysis is conducted to examine the brief solidification process of a pure liquid phase-change material within a rectangular enclosure when natural convection is present. The horizontal boundaries are both taken to be adiabatic, with one vertical barrier maintained at a temperature below the material's melting point and the other above. In this work, a numerical investigation of the melting of wax (namely N-octadecane) is presented. The numerical simulations of the experiments were carried out using STAR CCM+, and the results were compared with the results of other numerical simulations (FLOW 3D). The numerical simulations of gallium melting were carried out with a commercial code, STAR CCM+, which captures the solid-liquid interface with a fixed grid. This software captures the solid-liquid interface for phase change simulations in complex geometries with the enthalpy formulation technique. In addition, it demonstrates that computational fluid mechanics has reached a state of development where it permits reliable flow computations with solidification and melting. Casting with metal melts can be studied to provide information to engineers during the design process of new casting tools. The available simulation tools can also be used to predict existing casting processes and determine the origins of defects. The key findings are as follows: The interface shape during the solidification of gallium from above is always determined in large part by anisotropy in heat conductivity and interface growth morphology. Natural convection in the liquid slows down the rate of melting and adds more complexity to the morphology and transport mechanisms at the interface.