Phase change materials for waste heat storage

• Main Author: Chin, Si Yu
• Other Authors: Fei Duan
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Engineering::Mechanical engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/169398
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Phase Change Materials are useful for waste heat recovery due to their advantages to store energy. Even so, the poor thermal conductivity of PCMs limits their heat transfer rate. To address this issue, fins can be added to the heat exchanger to improve on its rate of heat transfer. To conduct experiments on this topic, a new setup was created that can handle Heat Transfer Fluid between 0˚C to 100˚C and can be used for both charging and discharging cycles. In this study, Thermal Energy Storage (TES) will be positioned horizontally, with Rubitherm 42 as the PCM material. The volume of the material will be kept constant at 170ml, and the flow rate will be maintained at 0.5l/min. The experiment will use a finless tube and three tubes with fins to carry out the melting and solidification cycle. The experiment will be insulated to reduce heat waste to the surrounding during experiment. The data from the experiment will be analysed to determine the level of enhancement, which will be based on the amount of time it takes for all thermocouples in the TES unit to reach the melting temperature (43˚C) and solidification temperature (38˚C).During the experiment, Photos will be taken at the uninsulated view for every 30 seconds, to monitor the PCMs melting and solidification process. The liquid fraction of the 4 tubes will be calculated using photos taken at the uninsulated view, which can be useful in analysing the effectiveness of the fins. In the future, numerical simulations of the experiment can be conducted and compared to the experimental results to validate the simulation settings and subsequent simulations for various fin designs.