Received: November 3, 2019 Accepted: January 6, 2020 Publication Date: December 1, 2020
Copyright The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are cited.
The improved thermal energy-storage performance of LiNO3-KCL eutectic composite as effective phase-change material (PCM) for medium-temperature (over 100 ºC) applications was numerically investigated in this study. Porous metallic foam as powerful performance enhancer along with shell-and-tube heat exchanger as high performing containment design was both employed for improving the overall thermal energy-storage process. A numerical simulation model was built using finite-volume discretization scheme. Convective heat transfer in the liquid PCM, conductive heat transfer in the metallic foam, and varying temperature-based physical properties of the PCM composite were all taken in consideration during development of the numerical model. Different metallic-foam porosities with different heat-transfer-fluid (HTF) temperatures were examined and compared to the reference case of no foam. Total times of complete melting were predicted for all foam porosities and temperatures of HTF considered in this work. The results showed that inclusion of metallic foam into PCM system results in saving of melting time up to 72% depending on porosity of the foam and temperature of the HTF.
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