Study on heat transfer enhancement of solar finned tube phase change regenerator

Abstract

Based on the problems of heat storage in the process of solar energy utilization and the advantages of finned tube heat exchanger, the finned tube is applied into the solar phase change heat accumulator and the heat storage process of the phase change material is simulated numerically. The results show that the use of finned tube instead of smooth tube in solar phase change heat accumulator can effectively improve the heat transfer intensity of the outside of the tube during phase change heat storage, thus enhancing the heat transfer capacity of the whole heat accumulator and shortening the heat storage time. In the simulation range of this paper, the optimum structure parameter of finned tube is: finned outer diameter of D2=28mm, fins thickness of t=1mm, fins number of c=13, spacing between fins of h=25mm.