Effects of streamlined container design on control melting time of Phase Change Materials

ABSTRACT

Control of melting time for any chemical is important on behalf of the energy efficiency. In this study, two types of container with stepped geometry was designed to melt phase change materials (PCMs) under natural convection conditions. Volume of two containers are the same but one of geometry has streamlined corners. Thus, this two containers are compared to see the melting time under the same boundary conditions. The Paraffin was used as PCM and its melting temperature and latent heat of fusion are 53°C and 243 kj/kg, respectively. In the first case, stepped geometry was used and then, this geometry was by streamlined corners for different aspect ratios and temperature differences. It is observed that the streamlined geometry can be used as passive control method for melting time. For the chosen geometry in the present study, the melting time is reduced at least 5% and energy efficiency can be improved.

KEYWORDS:

• streamlined geometry
• container
• PCM
• numerical
• melting

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hakan F. Öztop

Hakan F. Oztop was born in 1973 in Elazig, Turkey. He is an Associate Professor at Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technology Faculty, Firat University, Elazig, Turkey. He got the BS Degree from Firat University, Department of Mechanical engineering in 1996, MS and PhD from the same university at 1998 and 2003, respectively. He had been in Ecole Poyltechnique de Montreal, Canada in 2002 and Auburn University, USA, as a visiting scholar in 2004. He got scholarship from Turkish Research Council (TUBITAK) and NATO for post-doctorate positions. His research has been involved numerical heat transfer and fluid flow in forced, mixed and natural convection through duct or cavities including clear, porous or nanofluid media. He has also experience on second law analysis of thermofluids system , energy efficiency and renewable energy techologies. In recent years, he deals with energy storage by using Phase Change Materials, thermal batteries and nano particle enhanced Phase Change Materials. He has published 600 papers in SCI journals and 100 research papers in international or national conferences and national journals. His h-index is 89. He is associate editors in journals of International Journal of Mechanical Science (Editorial Board), Thermal Science (Regional Editor), Int. J. Thermodynamics (Associate Editor) and Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Dynamics.

Elanur Baki Sezgin

Elanur Baki Sezgin was born in 1996 in Elazig, Turkey. She got the BS Degree from Firat University, Department of Mechanical engineering in 2018, MS from the same university at 2021. She is still continuing her PhD education, which she started at Van Yüzüncü Yıl University in 2022. Her work is on step-by-step flows, phase-changing materials and energy storage.