CFD ANALYSIS ON THERMAL ENERGY STORAGE IN PHASE CHANGE MATERIALS

Debojyoti Chakraborty, Payoli Aich1, M.N.Biswas2 Department of Chemical Engineering Heritage Institute of Technology, Kolkata 2 Former Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

ABSTRACT

Phase Change Materials (PCMs) are widely used to store solar energy as latent heat. These materials can also be used to store waste heat available from chimney, reboiler etc. A vertical concentric pipe regenerative type heat exchanger has been modeled where, Heat Transfer Fluid (HTF) is passing through the inner pipe and phase change material is inserted into the annulus. Simulation has been carried out to estimate the temperature profiles in solid and liquid domain of PCM along radial as well as axial directions using FLUENT 6.2 version. In present study, paraffin wax has been selected as PCM. As most of the PCMs possess very low thermal conductivity, the temperature distributions become non uniform in the PCM. Due to this non uniform distribution of temperature, natural convection is taking place in liquid domain. It indicates that velocity domains in vertical and horizontal directions must be determined for complete understanding of heat transfer process in PCM. Therefore, the velocity profile in liquid domain has also been estimated by CFD analysis. Solid-liquid moving boundary in PCM can be predicted by the temperature profiles.

KEYWORDS: Phase Change Materials, Heat Transfer Fluid, Regenerative Type Heat Exchanger, CFD analysis, Solid-liquid moving boundary.

CorrespondingAuthor:PayoliAich;+919830624972;45/19,M.B.Sarani,Kolkata700040;[email protected].

1.0. Introduction: The thermal energy storage device plays a significant role to utilize the solar energy because of its periodic feature. A Phase Change Material (PCM) is a substance with a high heat of fusion which, melting and solidifying at certain temperatures, is capable of storing or releasing large amounts of energy. [1] The only phase change used for PCMs is the solid-liquid change. Liquid-gas PCMs are not yet practical for use as thermal storage. Although they have a high heat of transformation, the increase in volume during the phase change from liquid to gas makes their use impractical. Initially, the solid-liquid PCMs perform like conventional storage materials; their temperature rises as they absorb solar heat. Unlike conventional storage materials, however, when PCMs reach the temperature at which they change phase (their melting point) they absorb large amounts of heat without rising temperature. When the ambient temperature in the space around the PCM material drops, the PCM solidifies, releasing its stored latent heat. PCMs therefore absorb and emit heat while maintaining a nearly constant temperature. Within the human comfort range of 20 to 30C, latent thermal storage materials are very effective. They store 5 to 14 times more heat per unit volume than conventional storage materials such as water, masonry, or rock. Phase change materials are employed in different fields of thermal engineering like energy storage, thermal conditioning of buildings, waste heat recovery, off peak power utilization, heat pump systems, space applications, laptop computer cooling, and telecom shelters. [2] A heat pipe is an evaporation-condensation device for transferring heat in which the latent heat of vaporization is exploited to transport heat over long distances with a corresponding small temperature difference. The heat transport is made possible by means of evaporating a liquid in the heat inlet region (called the evaporator) and subsequently condensing the vapour in a heat rejection region (called the condenser). Closed circulation of the working fluid is maintained by capillary action and /or bulk forces. The heat pipe was originally invented by Gaugler of the General Motors Corporation in 1942, but it was not, however, until its independent invention by Grover [3, 4] in the early 1960s that the remarkable properties of the heat pipe became appreciated and serious development work took place. If we know what is the flow type, temperature profile and turbulence zones in heat pipe heat exchanger are very advantageous for high efficiency and economical design .Although the most ongoing designs use experimental methods, but as an outcome of growth and development of numerical methods and the softwares which can solve the PDE, the inclination for analysis of fluid flow and heat transfer are appeared. So because of economical limitation of empirical assessments and rigidity of turbulence conditions authentication and details in heat exchangers, a dependable modeling is desired for heat exchanger designing. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is one of the tough methods for fluid flow simulation that analyzes the systems consists of momentum transfer, heat transfer and chemical reactions (mass transfer). In fact, CFD is more than a simulator because it manifests designers having good sights about the operations and processes in the system. In this paper, goal is the analysis of fluid conditions on the simulation of heat

exchanger with PCM in its annular region. [5] 2.0 .CFD Modeling : 2.1. Description of proposed experimental set up: The proposed experimental set up consists of two vertical concentric cylinders having length of 1 ft. The paraffin wax has been used as the PCM. The annular shell space was filled with PCM. The outer radius of inner pipe (ri) was 1/2// and inner radius of outer pipe (ro) was 3/2//. The heat transfer fluid (HTF) at a fixed flow rate is pumped through the cylindrical inside tube. For the purpose of experiments a thermostatic bath is used to maintain the constant inlet temperature of the transfer liquid. Thermocouples are inserted at different axial (along x) and radial (along r) positions of the annulus to record the transient temperature of the PCM.

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the experimental setup

Table 1: Physical parameters required for CFD modeling Physical parameters Wall Temperature (in Celcius)
Phase Change Matter

Value 80
Wax

Viscosity (kg/m.s) 0.08Pas 3 Density (kg /m ) 818 Heat conduction (W/m.K) 0.24

Table 2: Inlet and outlet temperatures for different cases. Different cases Case 1 Case 2 Case 3 T in in degree Celcius 65 70 80 Tout in degree Celcius 47 50 50

2.2. Grid Generation and Numerical Solutions by Fluent 6.2: CFD techniques consist of numerical solutions of mass, Momentum and energy conservation with other equations like species transport. Two main stages comprise the solution of CFD problems. First, PCM regime has been divided into small control volumes known as mesh. In present system, the body fitted meshes have been constructed. Next part is the numerical solutions of mass, Momentum and energy conservation equations. In this case, unsteady energy balance equation has been solved in solid phase and unsteady momentum and energy balance equation have been solved simultaneously in liquid phase for each control volume. After making intricate meshing in gambit, it is exported to Fluent and in 3D; simulations were made for 3 cases with process parameters.

Fig 2: Grid Generated

Fig 3: Temperature Profile

3.0. Results and Discussions: The transient temperature profiles in annulus along radial and axial directions have been obtained by solving unsteady energy balance equation using Fluent 6.2 version. The temperatures profiles have been estimated for both cases-melting and solidification. As the natural convection was considered in liquid phase therefore, unsteady momentum and energy balance equation have been solved simultaneously in liquid phase.

3.1. Annular view: Contours Generated

Fig: 4. Contour generated initially

Fig: 5: Contour generated after few iterations

Fig6: Temperature Profile

Table 3: Temperature in degree Celsius at different Radial Distance in inches. Radial Distance in inches Temperature change in case 1 in degree Celcius Temperature change in case 2 in degree Celcius Temperature change in case 3 in degree Celcius

1.5 1.5 4.5 4.5 7.5 7.5 10.5 10.5

66 59 54 52 48 47 47 47

70 67 64 58 57 53 50 50

80 76 72 68 64.5 62.6 61.9 60.8

Temperature vs Radial Distance

Temperature in degree Celcius

73

66

59

Temperature
52

45

T1= 65-47 T2=70-50 T3=80-60

Radial Distance in inches

Fig. 7: Temperature vs. Radial Distance in Graphical plot

Fig 8: Temperature vs. Time Plot. 4.0. Conclusions: The transient heat transfer characteristics of phase change material encapsulated in an annular space have been experimentally and theoretically studied. At the vicinity of the wall of the inner pipe through which heat is supplied to shell side (annulus), the temperature difference is very steep. The phase change near wall is noted by the formation of a flat plateau regime o n t e m p e r a t u r e v s . time p l o t . The r a d i a l variation o f t h e temperature i s noted in three different cases and also the natural convection was considered in liquid phase. Different contours were generated by using Fluent. The temperatures profiles have been estimated for both cases-melting and solidification. The radial variation o f t h e t e m p e r a t u r e i s discernible during the heating cycle compared to that in the cooling cycle.

Acknowledgement: The authors would like to thank Heritage Institute of Technology, Kolkata for all its support. The authors would also like to thank Dr. S.K.Das, Reader, Department of Chemical Engineering, and University of Calcutta for allowing to use the Fluent software.

References:

[1] Wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_Change_Material [2]. D. W. Hawes, D. Feldman and D. Banu: Latent heat storage in building materials; Buildings Volume, 1993, Pages 77-86; [3]. Grover, G.M. US Patent 3229759. Filed 1963. [4]Grover, G.M. Cotter, T.P. and Erickson, G.F. Structures of very high thermal conductance ;J. App. Phys., Vol. 35, P. 1990, 1964 [5]. M. H. Saber, H. Mazaher Ashtiani. Simulation and CFD Analysis of heat pipe heat exchanger using Fluent to increase of the thermal efficiency. [6]. Y. Zhang, A. Faghri (1996), Heat transfer enhancement in latent heat thermal energy storage system by using the internally finned tube, Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer 39(50), 3165-3173. [7]. R. Velraj, R.V. Seeniraj, et al. (1997), Solar Energy, 60(5) 281-290.