Heat transfer coefficient

Engineering

Heat transfer

Materials science

Heat transfer enhancement

Thermal conductivity

Annular fin

Heat flux

Power (physics)

Latent heat

Mechanical engineering

Phase-change material

Thermodynamics

Physics

Thermal

Energy storage

Composite material

Mechanics

Casing

Thermal energy storage

Journal of Energy Storage

Taking the casing phase change heat storage unit filled with RT55 as the research object. According to the low thermal conductivity of phase change materials, we propose a Phase Change Material (PCM) sleeve with snowflake longitudinal fin structure to improve the melting performance of vertical latent heat storage system (LHTES), and the phase change heat transfer process is simulated by numerical simulation. We studied the enhanced heat transfer characteristics of the snowflake-shaped fin structure to the casing PCM unit, and compared with the ordinary rectangular longitudinal fin and the improved snowflake-shaped longitudinal fin. The results show that the combined mechanism of snowflake finned tube structure and local heat transfer of phase change materials can significantly shorten the charging time, which is 45.59% lower than that of traditional fin melting time. Reasonable changes in fin length, width, shape and angle structure can shorten the charging time, but reduce the heat storage. We analyzed the thermal performance of the heat storage system by taking the charging time, heat storage capacity and average heat flux as evaluation indexes, and discussed the effects of flow temperature in the tube, fin material and longitudinal fin shape on the melting performance of the system.

Study on thermal performance of a new optimized snowflake longitudinal fin in vertical latent heat storage