scholarly journals The Thermal Charging Performance of Finned Conical Thermal Storage System Filled with Nano-Enhanced Phase Change Material

Molecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 1605
Author(s):  
Mohammad Ghalambaz ◽  
Hassan Shirivand ◽  
Kasra Ayoubi Ayoubloo ◽  
S.A.M. Mehryan ◽  
Obai Younis ◽  
...  

A latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) unit can store a notable amount of heat in a compact volume. However, the charging time could be tediously long due to weak heat transfer. Thus, an improvement of heat transfer and a reduction in charging time is an essential task. The present research aims to improve the thermal charging of a conical shell-tube LHTES unit by optimizing the shell-shape and fin-inclination angle in the presence of nanoadditives. The governing equations for the natural convection heat transfer and phase change heat transfer are written as partial differential equations. The finite element method is applied to solve the equations numerically. The Taguchi optimization approach is then invoked to optimize the fin-inclination angle, shell aspect ratio, and the type and volume fraction of nanoparticles. The results showed that the shell-aspect ratio and fin inclination angle are the most important design parameters influencing the charging time. The charging time could be changed by 40% by variation of design parameters. Interestingly a conical shell with a small radius at the bottom and a large radius at the top (small aspect ratio) is the best shell design. However, a too-small aspect ratio could entrap the liquid-PCM between fins and increase the charging time. An optimum volume fraction of 4% is found for nanoparticle concentration.

Molecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 1496
Author(s):  
Mohammad Ghalambaz ◽  
S.A.M. Mehryan ◽  
Ahmad Hajjar ◽  
Mohammad Yacoub Al Shdaifat ◽  
Obai Younis ◽  
...  

A wavy shape was used to enhance the thermal heat transfer in a shell-tube latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) unit. The thermal storage unit was filled with CuO–coconut oil nano-enhanced phase change material (NePCM). The enthalpy-porosity approach was employed to model the phase change heat transfer in the presence of natural convection effects in the molten NePCM. The finite element method was applied to integrate the governing equations for fluid motion and phase change heat transfer. The impact of wave amplitude and wave number of the heated tube, as well as the volume concertation of nanoparticles on the full-charging time of the LHTES unit, was addressed. The Taguchi optimization method was used to find an optimum design of the LHTES unit. The results showed that an increase in the volume fraction of nanoparticles reduces the charging time. Moreover, the waviness of the tube resists the natural convection flow circulation in the phase change domain and could increase the charging time.


Author(s):  
Adriano Sciacovelli ◽  
Vittorio Verda ◽  
Francesco Colella

The present paper describes the application of computational fluid-dynamics (CFD) for the analysis of the melting process in a single vertical shell-and-tube heat exchanger. The computations are based on a 2D axial-symmetric model that takes in account the phase change phenomenon by means of the enthalpy method. The numerical studies aimed at clarifying the importance of the different heat transfer mechanisms with a particular focus on natural convection demonstrating its fundamental importance on the phase change process by enhancing the heat transfer between HTF and solid PCM. the paper discusses the effect of two different common performance enhancement techniques: dispersion of high conductive nano-particles in the PCM and the introduction of radial fins. An extensive thermo-fluid dynamic study has been undertaken exploring the effect on the thermal performance enhancement of particle volume fraction and fins. The analysis shows that in comparison to the standard design, the performances of the LHTS unit in terms of charging time could be improved by up to 40 % for nano-particle enhancement. When fins are considered charging time can be reduced to one-third of its original value. Significant improvements are also achieved during the solidification process: discharge time is reduced of 33% with fins enhancement.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2401
Author(s):  
Mohammad Ghalambaz ◽  
S. A. M. Mehryan ◽  
Ahmad Hajjar ◽  
Mehdi A. Fteiti ◽  
Obai Younis ◽  
...  

The melting heat transfer of CuO—coconut oil embedded in a non-uniform copper metal foam—was addressed. Copper foam is placed in a channel-shaped Thermal Energy Storage (TES) unit heated from one side. The foam is non-uniform with a linear porosity gradient in a direction perpendicular to the heated surface. The finite element method was applied to simulate natural convection flow and phase change heat transfer in the TES unit. The results showed that the porosity gradient could significantly boost the melting rate and stored energy rate in the TES unit. The best non-uniform porosity corresponds to a case in which the maximum porosity is next to a heated surface. The variation of the unit placement’s inclination angle is only important in the final stage of charging, where there is a dominant natural convection flow. The variation of porous pore size induces minimal impact on the phase change rate, except in the case of a large pore size of 30 pore density (PPI). The presence of nanoparticles could increase or decrease the charging time. However, using a 4% volume fraction of nanoparticles could mainly reduce the charging time.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2667
Author(s):  
Mohammad Ghalambaz ◽  
S.A.M. Mehryan ◽  
Mahboobeh Mahdavi ◽  
Obai Younis ◽  
Mohammad A. Alim

A conical shell-tube design with non-uniform fins was addressed for phase change latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES). The shell was filled with nano-enhanced phase change material (NePCM). The cone aspect ratio of the shell and the fins aspect ratio were adopted as the geometrical design parameters. The type and volume fraction of the nanoparticles were other design parameters. The investigated nanoparticles were alumina, graphite oxide, silver, and copper. The finite element method was employed to solve the natural convection flow and phase change thermal energy equations in the LHTES unit. The Taguchi optimization method was utilized to maximize the melting rate in the unit. Two cases of ascending and descending conical shells were investigated. The outcomes showed that the shell-aspect ratio and fin aspect ratio were the most important design parameters, followed by the type and concentration of nanoparticles. Both ascending and descending designs could lead to the same melting rate at their optimum design. The optimum design of LHTES could improve the melting rate by up to 18.5%. The optimum design for ascending (descending) design was a plain tube (a cone aspect ratio of 1.17) filled by 4.5% alumina-Bio-PCM (1.5% copper-Bio-PCM).


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5086
Author(s):  
Fatih Selimefendigil ◽  
Hakan F. Oztop ◽  
Ali J. Chamkha

Single and double impinging jets heat transfer of non-Newtonian power law nanofluid on a partly curved surface under the inclined magnetic field effects is analyzed with finite element method. The numerical work is performed for various values of Reynolds number (Re, between 100 and 300), Hartmann number (Ha, between 0 and 10), magnetic field inclination (γ, between 0 and 90), curved wall aspect ratio (AR, between 01. and 1.2), power law index (n, between 0.8 and 1.2), nanoparticle volume fraction (ϕ, between 0 and 0.04) and particle size in nm (dp, between 20 and 80). The amount of rise in average Nusselt (Nu) number with Re number depends upon the power law index while the discrepancy between the Newtonian fluid case becomes higher with higher values of power law indices. As compared to case with n = 1, discrepancy in the average Nu number are obtained as −38% and 71.5% for cases with n = 0.8 and n = 1.2. The magnetic field strength and inclination can be used to control the size and number or vortices. As magnetic field is imposed at the higher strength, the average Nu reduces by about 26.6% and 7.5% for single and double jets with n greater than 1 while it increases by about 4.78% and 12.58% with n less than 1. The inclination of magnetic field also plays an important role on the amount of enhancement in the average Nu number for different n values. The aspect ratio of the curved wall affects the flow field slightly while the average Nu variation becomes 5%. Average Nu number increases with higher solid particle volume fraction and with smaller particle size. At the highest particle size, it is increased by about 14%. There is 7% variation in the average Nu number when cases with lowest and highest particle size are compared. Finally, convective heat transfer performance modeling with four inputs and one output is successfully obtained by using Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Interface System (ANFIS) which provides fast and accurate prediction results.


Author(s):  
Ayushman Singh ◽  
Srikanth Rangarajan ◽  
Leila Choobineh ◽  
Bahgat Sammakia

Abstract This work presents an approach to optimally designing a composite with thermal conductivity enhancers (TCEs) infiltrated with phase change material (PCM) based on figure of merit (FOM) for thermal management of portable electronic devices. The FOM defines the balance between effective thermal conductivity and energy storage capacity. In present study, TCEs are in the form of a honeycomb structure. TCEs are often used in conjunction with PCM to enhance the conductivity of the composite medium. Under constrained composite volume, the higher volume fraction of TCEs improves the effective thermal conductivity of the composite, while it reduces the amount of latent heat storage simultaneously. The present work arrives at the optimal design of composite for electronic cooling by maximizing the FOM to resolve the stated trade-off. In this study, the total volume of the composite and the interfacial heat transfer area between the PCM and TCE are constrained for all design points. A benchmarked two-dimensional direct CFD model was employed to investigate the thermal performance of the PCM and TCE composite. Furthermore, assuming conduction-dominated heat transfer in the composite, a simplified effective numerical model that solves the single energy equation with the effective properties of the PCM and TCE has been developed. The effective thermal conductivity of the composite is obtained by minimizing the error between the transient temperature gradient of direct and simplified model by iteratively varying the effective thermal conductivity. The FOM is maximized to find the optimal volume fraction for the present design.


Nanomaterials ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali J. Chamkha ◽  
Fatih Selimefendigil ◽  
Hakan F. Oztop

Effects of a rotating cone in 3D mixed convection of CNT-water nanofluid in a double lid-driven porous trapezoidal cavity is numerically studied considering magnetic field effects. The numerical simulations are performed by using the finite element method. Impacts of Richardson number (between 0.05 and 50), angular rotational velocity of the cone (between −300 and 300), Hartmann number (between 0 and 50), Darcy number (between 10 − 4 and 5 × 10 − 2 ), aspect ratio of the cone (between 0.25 and 2.5), horizontal location of the cone (between 0.35 H and 0.65 H) and solid particle volume fraction (between 0 and 0.004) on the convective heat transfer performance was studied. It was observed that the average Nusselt number rises with higher Richardson numbers for stationary cone while the effect is reverse for when the cone is rotating in clockwise direction at the highest supped. Higher discrepancies between the average Nusselt number is obtained for 2D cylinder and 3D cylinder configuration which is 28.5% at the highest rotational speed. Even though there are very slight variations between the average Nu values for 3D cylinder and 3D cone case, there are significant variations in the local variation of the average Nusselt number. Higher enhancements in the average Nusselt number are achieved with CNT particles even though the magnetic field reduced the convection and the value is 84.3% at the highest strength of magnetic field. Increasing the permeability resulted in higher local and average heat transfer rates for the 3D porous cavity. In this study, the aspect ratio of the cone was found to be an excellent tool for heat transfer enhancement while 95% enhancements in the average Nusselt number were obtained. The horizontal location of the cone was found to have slight effects on the Nusselt number variations.


2010 ◽  
Vol 132 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eiyad Abu-Nada

Heat transfer enhancement in horizontal annuli using variable thermal conductivity and variable viscosity of CuO-water nanofluid is investigated numerically. The base case of simulation used thermal conductivity and viscosity data that consider temperature property dependence and nanoparticle size. It was observed that for Ra≥104, the average Nusselt number was deteriorated by increasing the volume fraction of nanoparticles. However, for Ra=103, the average Nusselt number enhancement depends on aspect ratio of the annulus as well as volume fraction of nanoparticles. Also, for Ra=103, the average Nusselt number was less sensitive to volume fraction of nanoparticles at high aspect ratio and the average Nusselt number increased by increasing the volume fraction of nanoaprticles for aspect ratios ≤0.4. For Ra≥104, the Nusselt number was deteriorated everywhere around the cylinder surface especially at high aspect ratio. However, this reduction is only restricted to certain regions around the cylinder surface for Ra=103. For Ra≥104, the Maxwell–Garnett and the Chon et al. conductivity models demonstrated similar results. But, there was a deviation in the prediction at Ra=103 and this deviation becomes more significant at high volume fraction of nanoparticles. The Nguyen et al. data and the Brinkman model give completely different predictions for Ra≥104, where the difference in prediction of the Nusselt number reached 50%. However, this difference was less than 10% at Ra=103.


Author(s):  
Laura Small ◽  
Fatemeh Hassanipour

This study presents numerical simulations of forced convection with parachute-shaped encapsulated phase-change material particles in water, flowing through a square cross-section duct with top and bottom iso-flux surfaces. The system is inspired by the gas exchange process in the alveolar capillaries between the red blood cells (RBC) and the lung tissue. The numerical model was developed for the motion of elongated encapsulated phase change particles along a channel in a particulate flow where particle diameters are comparable with the channel height. Results of the heat transfer enhancement for the parachute-shaped particles are compared with the circular particles. Results reveal that the key role in heat transfer enhancement is the snugness movement of the particles and the parachute-shaped geometry yields small changes in heat transfer coefficient when compared to the circular ones. The effects of various parameters including particle diameter and volume-fraction, as well as fluid speed, on the heat transfer coefficient is investigated and reported in this paper.


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