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Study on phase change temperature distributions of composite PCMs in thermal energy storage systems
Author(s) -
Wang Jianfeng,
Chen Guangming,
Zheng Fei
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
international journal of energy research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.808
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1099-114X
pISSN - 0363-907X
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1099-114x(19990325)23:4<277::aid-er475>3.0.co;2-q
Subject(s) - phase change , composite number , thermal energy storage , materials science , thermal , energy storage , phase (matter) , thermodynamics , environmental science , composite material , physics , power (physics) , quantum mechanics
A one‐dimensional (1D) physical model is developed for latent heat thermal energy storage (TES) systems using composite phase change materials (PCMs) with different phase change temperature (PCT) distributions. By theoretical investigation under the assumption of neglecting the sensible heat, the optimum linear PCT distributions which are corresponding to minimum phase change time are derived. To verify the theoretical results of the optimum linear PCT distributions, the finite difference method is adopted to simulate the cyclical freezing and melting processes of composite PCMs. The numerical results in which the sensible heat is taken into account show that: (1) the optimum linear PCT distributions obtained from the theoretical analyses seem to be the optimum ones of composite PCMs in practical latent heat TES systems; (2) the phase change time of composite PCMs with the optimum linear PCT distributions used in practical latent heat TES systems can be decreased by as much as 25–40% by properly selecting the segmented numbers of composite PCMs as compared with that of PCMs of a single PCT. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.