Thermal characterization of phase change materials (PCM) for heating applications

Abstract

In this paper, a numerical and experimental study has been done to investigate the melting and solidification of different PCMs. In numerical analysis melting rate of different PCM having melting temperatures in the range of 50–60 °C has been studied. In addition to this heat transfer process involved in melting and solidification is also studied. The numerical results use the Stefan equation to characterize the melting rate of different PCMs. The numerical result shows that STL + CENG has a melting rate of 0.5 mm/s, and paraffin C22-C45 has a lower melting rate of 0.15 mm/s. The result shows that the melting rate of STL + CENG is 2.3% higher than paraffin. The lower melting rate of paraffin C22-C45 is due to its poor thermal conductivity. Furthermore, experimental analysis has been done to investigate the charging and discharging rate of paraffin wax. The experimental result shows that the discharging rate of paraffin wax is 25% lower than the charging rate. The lower discharging rate is due to conduction-controlled heat transfer and the lower thermal conductivity of PCM.