Optimization of an innovative thermal energy storage technology at low temperatures

ABSTRACT

One of the most promising technologies used in building applications for energy efficiency purposes is the thermal energy storage (TES). Despite the thorough research on TES techniques of the last years, the availability in the market of cost-effective technologies is quite recent. For this reason it is necessary, nowadays, to develop accurate and fast numerical tools and experimental test bed for the optimization of this technology. The aim of this study is to optimize the energy behaviour of an innovative TES technology consisting on a water/PCM exchanger by testing the effects of geometry and thermo-physical changes of the system on its energy efficiency. The optimization approach presented in this article was developed based on the Genetic Algorithm (GA) method. Due to the lack of guidelines about the use of GAs in multi-objective optimization problems, it has been necessary to make some assumptions and to proceed by attempting possible solutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Optimization
• Genetic Algorithms
• Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithms II
• Thermal Energy Storage
• Phase Change Materials

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the French Agency for Environment and Energy Management (ADEME) and it is part of the project ‘Optimization of innovative energy storage technologies when coupled to multi-sources energy architectures’ based on the monitoring and optimization study of the positive energy district HIKARI (based in Lyon, France).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Letizia Roccamena http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8026-8901

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Agence de l'Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l'Energie.