Investigation on Phase Change Behavior of Paraffin Phase Change Material in a Spherical Capsule for Solar Thermal Storage Units

ABSTRACT

In this work, the melting and solidification behaviour of paraffin phase change material encapsulated in a stainless steel spherical container has been studied experimentally. A computational fluid dynamics analysis has also been performed for the encapsulated phase change material (PCM) during phase change process. In the melting process, the hot air, used as the heat transfer fluid enters the test section and flows over the spherical capsule resulting in the melting of phase change material. In the solidification process, the ambient air flows over the capsule and received heat from phase change material resulting in the solidification of phase change material. In the computational fluid dynamics, the constant wall boundary condition is employed for both melting (75°C) and solidification (36°C) processes since the internal conductive resistance offered by the PCM is much higher compared to the outer surface convective resistance. The time required for complete solidification and melting of the phase change material obtained from the computational fluid dynamics analysis are validated with the experimental results and a reasonable agreement is achieved. The reason for the deviation between the results are analyzed and reported.

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Notes on contributors

Kandasamy Hariharan

Kandasamy Hariharan received his B.E. (Mechanical) and M.E. (Energy Engineering) degrees from Department of Mechanical Engineering, Anna University. He is currently working in BGR Energy Systems Ltd, Chennai, India.

Gowri Sankar Senthil Kumar

Gowri Sankar Senthil Kumar received his B.E and M.S. degrees from Department of Mechanical Engineering, Anna University, Chennai. He studied one year PG diploma programme of Young India Fellowship at Ashoka University, New Delhi, India. He is currently working in TESSOL thermal energy solutions, Mumbai, India.

Govindaraj Kumaresan

Govindaraj Kumaresan is a Senior Assistant Professor, at Institute for Energy Studies, Anna University Chennai. He received Ph.D. from Institute for Energy Studies, Anna University in the field of Solar Thermal Energy Storage System. He has 15 years of teaching experience. His research interests include heat transfer, solar thermal, CFD and thermal energy storage. He has co-authored more than 30 referred journals and conference proceedings.

Ramalingam Velraj

Ramalingam Velraj is a Professor & Director of Institute for Energy Studies since 2013 and specializes in heat transfer, computational fluid dynamics and energy storage in solar thermal applications. He received DAAD fellowship as a part of his doctoral work and he carried out his research in Solar Institute, Julich, Germany. He is actively involved in consultancy works in the area of energy applications and performance evaluation of thermal systems. He has received active consultant award in the year 2011 and best innovation award in 2013 by Anna University, Chennai. He has in his credit, 29 consultancy projects and 9 research projects as Principal Investigator. He has published over 100 research papers in international journals of repute and 125 conference proceedings.