الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Thermal energy storage (TES) is a technology allows the storage of heat energy. It works as a battery for storing thermal energy. Materials can store thermal energy through sensible energy storage (STES) undergoing temperature variation during energy storage. Latent thermal energy storage systems (LTES) allow maintaining constant temperature while storing thermal energy through Phase change materials (PCMs) due to their large latent heats. Due to the low thermal conductivity of PCMs which leads to long time required for phase change, researchers work on developing the thermal performance of PCMs. In this work, a detailed experimental study is carried out to analyze the impact of mechanical movement expected to introduce forced convection heat transfer through the PCM resulting in faster melting process. Rectangular slab of paraffin is tested as a PCM. The melting temperature, Tm, of the tested paraffin is 55 ˚C with one heating face kept at 70 ˚C. The transient temperature gradients are tabulated and plotted. Tests show that, at the beginning of heating, the conduction heat transfer dominates the temperature rise with no observed changes between the moving and stationary tests. As the melted portion increases, the forced convection, created by oscillatory motion, dominates leading to a faster and certain complete melting process. |