Simulation of melting and solidification processes of organic phase change materials used in storing heat energy in multi-layers heat exchanger

Abstract

Optimizing energy consumption and also thermal energy production is the main issues that have encouraged many researchers to focus on renewable energy. In this simulation work, it has been tried to investigate the absorbed heat energy in the multi-layer heat exchanger. In this work, three paraffins RT22, RT24, and RT26 have been used under the process of melting and solidification in order to examine the heat energy produced during the process of phase change. In this study, it was observed by adding SWCNT and CuO nanoparticles, the thermal conductivity of paraffinic materials increases, in such a way that by rising the volume fraction of SWCNT and CuO nanoparticles up to 0.04, the thermal efficiency increases by 31% and 36.5%, respectively. It was also found that by reducing the cold wall temperature from 293.15 K to 278.15 K in the solidification process, the completion of the process is reduced by 33%. In this work, we accentuated the dimension of nanoparticles of SWCNT and CuO on heat transfer. We attempted to compare the effects of dimension 90 to 140 nm and the impact of the nanoparticles shape on heat transfer optimization.