Transient Response of Different Highly Conductive PCM Composites

Abstract

In this work, the thermal conductivity of paraffin wax has been enhanced by employing four different high conductivity additives infiltrated within the PCM. These include the use of Graphite Powder (GP), Copper Particles (CP), Aluminum oxide Particles (AP), and Copper Network (CN). Four different types of pure waxes were selected, tested and compared. Twelve samples of wax/additives composites were prepared by adding different mass ratios of 3, 6 and 9 % of additives by weight in each type of wax. The storage system contains spherical capsules filled with composite PCMs that are packed in an insulated cylindrical storage. Transient temperature based governing equations have been developed and solved numerically by both ANSYS FLUENT 14 code and by numerical implicit time marching model. With progress of time, results showed that the numerical predictions of ANSYS software start to deviate from the experimental observations. The grade-B paraffin was found to be the best one. Results indicate that all the enhancement methods have significant effect on the thermal response of the system. However, the utilization of 6 % additives by weight has been found to provide the best enhancement effect. The developed new-sort CN composite is found to produce the best thermal response due to its good homogeneity with wax and its high conductivity. Results showed that for CN composite with 6 % additives, the charging and discharging time decreased by 26.4 and 30.3 % respectively than that of pure wax and the thermal conductivity enhanced by 2.57 times that of pure wax.