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    Numerical Study On The Performance of Shell-And-Tube Thermal Energy Storage Using Multiple PCMs and Gradient Copper Foam

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    Hamza Faraji

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Renewable Energy 14 (2021) 573-589 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect =e ene rey Renewable Energy ELSEVIER journal homepage: www. com/locate/renene Numerical study on the performance of shell-and-tube thermal ® energy storage using multiple PCMs and gradient copper foam Laas. Liang Pu *"'*, Shengqi Zhang *, Lingling Xu *, Zhenjun Ma ‘, Xinke Wang ° “Deparment a erigeraton and Cagente gineering, Schoo of Energy and Power Emgncering, am faotong Uns, Xan, 71000, 8 Cina ey Laboratory or Thermal Science and Powe Engincning of Nis of Eduction Taha Universtiy eng 10084, Chine « staal Buldgs Research Centre Untersiy of Wollongong NSW 2322 Australie Schoo! of rman Setements nd Ci Eninerg.XTon Poot Univesity Tan, 710048 PR China ‘retry Recelved 15 October 2020 Receled in revi orm ‘Gap 2021 ‘Accepted 9 Ape 2021 ‘avalable online 24 Ape 2021 ‘Most phase change materials emplayed in latent heat thermal energy storage sue from poor thermal ‘onduetvity both in liquid and solid phases, leading fo low heat transfer effectiveness To overcome this limitation, multiple PCMs and gradient copper foam have been used fo accelerate the melting of phase change materials and improve the heat transfer effectiveness. The heat transfer performance of shell= and-tube thermal energy storage unt consisting of radial multiple PCMs and single PCM was numer Cally investigated, The ulization of single PCM showed better neat transfer effectiveness compared to {hat using radial multiple PCMs, The time saving for complete melting was up to 875%. The results ‘implied thatthe radial multiple PCMs have no advantage i thermal storage compared to single PCM, Based on single PCM system, three types of gradients of copper foam, named postive gradient, non- Heat transfer entsncement ‘Thermal energy storage sradient and negative gradient were designed in this study. The results indicated that the negative Mulpe Poms sradient type offers better heat transfer effectiveness than the non-gradient and positive gradient types et However, the temperature disteibution of non-gradient type was more uniform compared to postive an ‘negative types. Besides, an optimal configuration 0.9.-0:970.89 of negative gradient was recommended {o further reduce the complete melting time by 23.7% © 2021 Elsevier Lt, All rights reserved, 1. Introduction technology can moderate peak-valley differences and stabilize en- With the rapid development of economy and industry, the uti- lization of energy has drastically increased. In addition, the com- bustion of fossil fuels emits air pollutants to the atmosphere causing serious environmental pollution and global warming. Sta- tistical Review of World Energy issued by BP suggested that in 2018, ‘global energy demand and carbon emissions from energy use grew at their fastest rate in seven years [1], Therefore, itis necessary to utilize renewable energy as an alternative to fossil fuels. Solar en- ergy, wind and other natural resources are the most promising energy sources in the 21st century. It is characterized by clean, pollution-free and renewable. However there isa serious mismatch between energy demand and supply. Thermal energy storage (TES) = Corresponding author Department of Refrigeration and Cryogenic Engineering School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xan Jatong University Xran. 71008, PRetina mai adres: pulangwmallxnedcn (LP, tp: }iory0 106 enene 202104061 (0960-1481) 2021 sever Ud lights reserved ergy output for intermittent heat sources, There are three kinds of TES units, including sensible heat thermal energy storage (SHTES) [2.3]. latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) [4.5] nd chemical energy storage [6]. The thermal energy storage capacity of SHTES is quite small, leading to a large volume of energy storage systems. Seddegh et al. [7] reported that the LHTES unit can save 90% volume compared to SHTES for the same thermal storage capacity. The chemical energy storage is still in laboratory research stage due to complex, large initial invest- ‘ment and low efficiency. Therefore, LHTES based on phase change ‘materials (PCMs) has been widely used because of their large en- ergy density and almost constant temperature during the phase change process, such as electronics cooling [8.9] energy savings in buildings [10,11] and solar energy utilization [12,13]. However, ‘most PCMs suffer from the poor thermal conductivity, which greatly limited their applications and further development of LHTES. To overcome this limitation, heat transfer enhancement techniques should be employed to improve the melting rate of PCMs. Based on the Fourier’s law of heat conduction, the Shang, Ler Renee Energy 14 (221) 573-589 Nomenclature interfacial surface area per unit volume, m-* ao mushy zone constant, kg-m--5-1 . specific heat, Joke -K-! & inertia coefficient 4 fiber diameter, mm dy pore diameter, mm J liquid fraction : sravitational acceleration, mes? hg interfacial heat transfer coefficient, W- m-®+ K-! , thermal storage effciencyW /kg r dimensionless thermal storage efficiency . thermal conductivity, Wem-!-K-! k permeability, m? ‘ latent heatJks"" or the total length of the tube, P Prandtl number 4 ‘thermal storage density}/ks ° dimensionless thermal storage density P pressure, Pa atte tadial dimensions, mm 8 inner radius, mm te cuter radius, mm ke Reynolds number ? temperature ™ PCM melting temperature te %yedirection velocity, mes"! ee aband care numbers between O and I, representing the gradients of copper foam's porosity in zone A. B and C (such as 0.98-0.95-092) Acronyms CPCM composite phase change material cers cascaded -TES without copper foam Grens —_ cascaded-TES with copper foam ccestes _single-TES with copper foam HIF heat transfer fluid LATES latent heat thermal energy storage xe local thermal non-equilibrium rey phase change material PPL pores per inch fevs Toot mean square res _single-TES without copper foam TES thermal energy storage Greek symbols 8 thermal expansion coefficient, K é constant small number . porosity of copper foam # dynamic viscosity, m?+5 1 o density, kg-m-? x flow tortuosity o pore density, PPL Subscripts o Copper ' fluid phase S fluid effective value 5 solid phase « solid effective value enhancement techniques can be classified into three categories [14], ie, to increase the thermal conductivity by adding nano- ‘material additive [15] and expanded graphite [16], inserting metal foam [17 19}; to extend the heat wansfer surface by using encap- sulated PCMs (20,21 | and adding fins [22,23]; and to improve phase uniformity by setting multiple PCMs [24.25]. Compared to the strategies of adding fins and nanomaterial additive, metal foam has shown potential of increasing heat transfer area and effective thermal conductivity due to interconnected porous structute and the high thermal conductive ligaments. Therefore, the use of metal foam can take the advantages of both fins and nanomaterial addi- tive. As a typical porous media, metal foam has shown better heat transfer performance in LHTES. Based on the insertion of metal foam, in most of the studies experimental investigations were carried out to investigate the heat transfer performance in a cavity filled with metal foam and PCM, and numerical studies were performed to examine the phase change process in a shell-and-tube device filled with metal foam and PCM. Zhang et a. [25] investigated the melting process of the composite phase change materials in a cavity. The temperature of ‘metal foam ligament was measured for the first time. The two- energy model was employed to simulate the heat transfer in composite PCM, which agreed well with the experimental results Zheng et al. 27] established a visual device to investigate the in- fluence ofthe insertion of copper foam on phase change behavior of paraffin, Moreover, one-energy model was adopted to analyze the phase change behavior of the composite PCM. Ferfera and Madani [b8} investigated the heat dissipation characteristics of a heat exchanger coupled with composite PCM for thermal management of electronic equipment. The results illustrated that the heat diffusion of composite PCM was 4 times of the pure PCM because of the insert of metal foam. ‘An optimum thermal conductivity enhancer density strategy was developed by Joshi and Rathod [29] to determine the distri bution of metal foam. The primary strategy was to increase metal foam mass at the region of the high-temperature gradient and decrease metal foam mass at the region of low-temperature gra- dients, Based on different desired conditions, high and low porosity ‘metal foam was chosen for improve melting fate and LHTES a- pacity, respectively. Xu et al. [30] optimized the location of metal foam and proposed an optimal filling ratio of metal foam based on a new effective criterion called TES rate density. Yang et al. (37] proposed to embed porous media into both the PCM domain and hheat transfer fluid domain to improve the heat transfer behavior of LETES systems. Compared to the smooth tube system, the complete ‘melting time was reduced by 88.5%. Alhusseny etal. [32] employed high porosity metal foam to enhance the effective thermal con- ductivity of PCM in a tube-bundle LHTES unit. The proposed tube- bundle design of the LHTES system was proved easy to configure practically efficient. Caliano ef al. [23] investigated the effect of natural convection on the phase change behavior of the PCM in the ‘metal foam LHTES. The result revealed that local natural convection can be neglected in both charging and discharging processes. [New types of structures have been proposed to further improve the performance of LHTES. Tian and Zhao [1], for instance, pro- posed a metal foam-enhanced cascaded LHTES to deal with the sgradual deterioration of heat transfer caused by an unavoidable ‘decrease in emperature difference between the heat fluid flow and PCM along flow direction. A theoretical study was then performed to examine the heat transfer behavior of the single-TES, cascaded- ‘TES and metal foam-enhanced cascaded-TES, The heat transfer rate and exergy efficiency were considered in this study. Mahdi etal [25] investigated the solidification performance of the horizontal LATES including multiple PCMs by a two-dimension calculation. ‘The complete solidification time was reduced by 94% depending on the number of multiple PCMs used. However, the eflect of axial heat transfer was not considered in this study and there is a large gap between the use of constant wall temperature conditions and the actual application. Zhang etal. [36] reported that gradient porosity offered better thermal enhancement than the “homogeneous porosity in the vertical LHTES. This is because the PCM at the upper partis greatly influenced by natural convection, which accelerates the melting of the PCM. The gradient design made the thermal conductivity of the PCM at the lower part increased with a faster ‘melting process. Wang et al. [37] proposed gradient metal foam to overcome the limit of poor thermal conductivity of PCMs. The ‘gradient design improved temperature uniformity and the com- plete melting time reduced by 37.6%. In their study, porosity increased from inside to outside in sequence. This indicated that the outer layer of foam metal moved to the inner layer and the outer layer was more difficult to melt as compared to uniform porosity. Recently, a combination of fins and metal foam was introduced and applied by Zhang et al. [38] The results indicated that the combination showed better performance enhancement than using either fins or metal foam alone. In summary, the results showed that embedding metal foam, Into PCMs can improve their effective thermal conductivity and accelerate the melting and solidification of the PCMs. However, to the best of our knowledge, most studies have used either porous ‘media or multiple PCMs alone to improve the thermal behavior of LITES unit. Few studies have been conducted on the compound enhancement techniques. especially integrating porous media and ‘multiple PCMs along radial direction into LHTES unit sirulta- neously. In addition, the previous study focused on the perfor- ‘mance optimization of homogeneous metal foam in the TES system, ‘Therefore, combination of metal foam and multiple PCMS to improve the thermal performance was investigated in this study. Furthermore, the gradient metal foam along radial direction was proposed and investigated in this paper. This paper aims to investigate, for the fist time, the idea of the ‘gradient metal foam and multiple PCMs, which is perpendicular to the direction of gravity. To this end, the heat transfer performance of single PCM and multiple PCMs in TES units were first investi ‘gated, The influence of gradient metal foam on the heat transfer performance was then examined, The findings of this study can provide effective guidance and references forthe design of new and efficient TES units for industrial applications. 2. Model and method 2.1, Physical mode! ‘The two-dimensional rotational axisymmetric schematic of a shell-and-tube thermal energy storage unit is shown in Fig. I It consists of two copper tubes mounted concentrically with an outer radius of ro ~ 100 mm and an inner radius of rj = 17 mm. The thickness ofthe inner tube is 3 mm, Thus, the value ofr, equals to 20 mm. The length of the tube L is 1050 mr. Copper foam was inserted into paraffin wax to form composite PCM (CPCM). Water is adopted as the heat transfer fluid (HTF). HTF and CPCM were at- ranged in the tube and shell side respectively. Based on previous research [23]. HTF injected from the bottom offered better thermal performance compared to HTF injected from the top. Therefore, water is injected from the bottom with an inlet temperature of emeeble Energy 14 (221) 573-589 outlet ancl }—> tube side }—» tube }—> shell side inlet Fig. 1 Two-dimensional ctaional axsjrmetsic schematic of the shlland-tabe ‘hesmal energy storage ui 363 K and a velocity of 0.2 m-s~, enabling a laminar flow in the inner tube. Fi, 2 illustrates three different thermal energy storage Units. Three composite PCMS: the single PCM with single copper foam, the multiple PCMs with single copper foam, and the single PCM with gradient copper foam, were arranged inthe shell side of diferent TES units. The single PCM used was PCM2 (RT55). and the porosity © of copper foam was 0.95 as shown in Fig, 2a). The ‘multiple PCMs included PCM-1 (RT60), PCM-2 (RTS5) and PCM-3 (RISO) with a melting temperature of 333 K, 328 K and 323 K respectively, and the porosity e of copper foam in different PCM regions was 0.95 as illustrated in Fig. 2(b). In the thd composite PCM, the single PCM was PCML2 (R55), and the average porosity 2 of copper foam was 0.95 as presented in Fis, 2(€). The average temperature of 328 K and average porosity of 0.95 in different units allowed the comparisons between these cases. The pore density of copper foam was 20 PPI. As illustrated in Fiz. 2(b) and (6) the shell side was divided into three parts with the equal volume. Therefore, the values of ny and re were 60 mm and 825 mm, respectively. In the same context, single-TES and cascaded-TES indicated thatthe TES included one PCM (PCM-2) and three PCMs (PCM-1, PCM-2 and PCM-3), respectively. Shang, Ler Renee Energy 14 (221) 573-589 Y | outlet y I outlet y I outlet ihe | ute abe + pewate = pewite arena }~ restate restaten fe reuse restates n fm | ine Jn © » © Fig2 Schematics ce deren here enerysorge unis) the single PEM wit singe copper foun) theme PES with single cer oan a) single FEM vn eaiet copper fu The thermo-physical properties of copper, water and PCMs as ww a poner eon estan 42 (4%), ax[-(beMGm)urs] a thermo-physical properties, especially thermal conductivity and v K reasons 22. Governing equations ap 18 (,, i (el ) The Enthalpy-porosty model vas adopted to calculate the Sul) v+160(1; -Tm) +5] melting proces of PeMs, According tothe measurements of Zhang et al. [26], there is a large temperature difference between the PCMs Qa) land copper foam ligaments. Therefore, the local thermal 100- —_tiquid-phase energy equations equilibrium (LTNE) model was utilization to describe the heat Uiquid-ph te transfer between PCMs and copper foam ligaments, and double- energy tansport equations for PeMs and copper foam Hgament svn) om) tween the capper foam ligament and the PCM and” does ot aa — requte modeling ofthe complex geometry of metal foam, Thea e%,. ae ety eT surnptions adopted in the simulation areas follows * (2. ot) + 1 [Chet ha) (a (1) The PeMistreatedasan incompressible Mand the change yay (ts 7 “ in density fellows Bossinexg approximation. +hyag(T-T) a (2) Volume expansion of the PCM is not considered inthe nu Ine simulation, and the flow ofthe liquid PEM in the SOld-pbaseenery equations metal skeleton gap is considered 3s laminar flo (3) sed on the open-cell configuration, the copper fam i a on at assumed to be isotropic and homogeneous, [C1 =) + 901 = eases? = (1) » hs (a . er) (5) Continuity equation: 2 te (SF EE) + nya (7-7) alert) aor) _ a wa The afeent values of and + were assigned ro the above cavaton, representing the control equations of diferent zones. Momentum equations the copper tube zone and heat transfer fluid zone, the values of 1) : fn were set 330 an. rexpectivey Inthe copper foam ze the 1 (et) 1 (eam) a(oyu)) ap. au values ofr and e were set as 1 and porosity of copper foam, aoa ta (ar ay) naw (ae a ‘Sy and $, are the momentum source items to describe the liquid fraction in pore volume, which is defined as: Shang, Ler Renee Energy 14 (221) 573-589 ble “Them hkl oper of copper water an PEM Proper POT TaN Fears ar won Density 5-0") 785 7 70 ‘a ‘sm0 specie bat He =) 200 00 200 sie by Thema conic (Wm o a a as as re) Dynami vcs eg m= 5) 265104 308.104 0100 Thermal expansion cote) ows. 10+ agri" Nolan terperau mim en S = 2a 6) K & 13) (6) 360 Dx ey orm(dy) | ey G=on0212(1 0) 2™({F) (14) Effective thermal conductivity (ke): Where Ais known asthe mushy zone constant whichis eatedto 4. A i. the amplitude of velocity damping, and is equal to 10° in this study. (5) is set as 0,001 by FLUENT to prevent division by zero. fis the liquid traction of FM, which is computed 3s or

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