Open AccessExperimental and Numerical Investigation of Combined Sensible/Latent Thermal Energy Storage for High-Temperature Applications
Author(s) -
Lukas Geissbühler,
Simone Zavattoni,
Maurizio Barbato,
Giw Zanganeh,
Andreas Haselbacher,
Aldo Steinfeld
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
chimia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.387
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 2673-2424
pISSN - 0009-4293
DOI - 10.2533/chimia.2015.799
Subject(s) - thermal energy storage , latent heat , heat transfer , materials science , outflow , packed bed , sensible heat , thermodynamics , porosity , fraction (chemistry) , thermal , mechanics , energy storage , nuclear engineering , chemistry , composite material , chromatography , meteorology , physics , power (physics) , engineering
Combined sensible/latent heat storage allows the heat-transfer fluid outflow temperature during discharging to be stabilized. A lab-scale combined storage consisting of a packed bed of rocks and steel-encapsulated AlSi12 was investigated experimentally and numerically. Due to the small tank-to-particle diameter ratio of the lab-scale storage, void-fraction variations were not negligible, leading to channeling effects that cannot be resolved in 1D heat-transfer models. The void-fraction variations and channeling effects can be resolved in 2D models of the flow and heat transfer in the storage. The resulting so-called bypass fraction extracted from the 2D model was used in the 1D model and led to good agreement with experimental measurements.