Performance analysis of a solar cooling system with equal and unequal adsorption/desorption operating time

Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. In solar-thermal adsorption/desorption processes, it is not always possible to preserve equal operating times for the adsorption/desorption modes due to the fluctuating supply nature of the source which largely affects the system’s operating conditions. This paper seeks to examine the impact of adopting unequal adsorption/desorption times on the entire cooling performance of solar adsorption systems. A cooling system with silica gel–water as adsorbent-adsorbate pair has been built and tested under the climatic condition of Iraq. A mathematical model has been established to predict the system performance, and the results are successfully validated via the experimental findings. The results show that, the system can be operational at the unequal adsorption/desorption times. The performance of the system with equal time is almost twice that of the unequal one. The roles of adsorption velocity, adsorption capacity, overall heat transfer coefficient, and the performance of the cooling system are also evaluated.Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research / Research and Development Department / Program of Renewable and Sustainable Energy Projects, grant number 1613

Effect of the quasi-petal heat transfer tube on the melting process of the nano-enhanced phase change substance in a thermal energy storage unit

Data Availability Statement: The data will be available on request.Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. The melting heat transfer of nano-enhanced phase change materials was addressed in a thermal energy storage unit. A heated U-shape tube was placed in a cylindrical shell. The cross-section of the tube is a petal-shape, which can have different amplitudes and wave numbers. The shell is filled with capric acid with a fusion temperature of 32 °C. The copper (Cu)/graphene oxide (GO) type nanoparticles were added to capric acid to improve its heat transfer properties. The enthalpy-porosity approach was used to model the phase change heat transfer in the presence of natural convection heat transfer effects. A novel mesh adaptation method was used to track the phase change melting front and produce high-quality mesh at the phase change region. The impacts of the volume fraction of nanoparticles, the amplitude and number of petals, the distance between tubes, and the angle of tube placements were investigated on the thermal energy rate and melting-time in the thermal energy storage unit. An average charging power can be raised by up to 45% by using petal shape tubes compared to a plain tube. The nanoadditives could improve the heat transfer by 7% for Cu and 11% for GO nanoparticles compared to the pure phase change material.Funding: This research received no external funding

Twisted-fin parametric study to enhance the solidification performance of phase-change material in a shell-and-tube latent heat thermal energy storage system

Copyright © The Author(s) 2022. Phase change material (PCM) is considered as one of the most effective thermal energy storage (TES) systems to balance energy supply and demand. A key challenge in designing efficient PCM-based TES systems lies in the enhancement of heat transmission during phase transition. This study numerically examines the privilege of employing twisted-fin arrays inside a shell-and-tube latent heat storage unit to improve the solidification performance. The presence of twisted fins contributes to the dominating role of heat conduction by their curved shapes, which restricts the role of natural convection but largely aids the overall heat-transfer process during solidification. The heat-discharge rate of twisted-fin configuration is increased by ∼14 and ∼55% compared to straight fin and no fin configurations—leading to a reduction in the solidification duration by ∼13 and ∼35%, respectively. The solidification front at various times has also been assessed through a detailed parametric study over the fin height, fin pitch number, and fin thickness. Over the range of values assumed, the fin height is the most dominant parameter – increasing the heat-retrieval rate from 10.0 to 11.4 W and decreasing the discharge time from above 3600 to 2880 s by varying the fin height from 2.5 to 7.5 mm.National Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51904233); the National Science Foundation of China (Grant No.52074218 ); Innovation Capability Support Program of Shannxi Province (Grant No. 2020TD- 021)

Impact of Tube Bundle Placement on the Thermal Charging of a Latent Heat Storage Unit

The melting process of a multi-tube’s thermal energy storage system in the existence of free convection effects is a non-linear and important problem. The placement of heated tubes could change the convective thermal circulation. In the present study, the impact of the position of seven heat exchanger tubes was systematically investigated. The energy charging process was numerically studied utilizing liquid fraction and stored energy with exhaustive temperature outlines. The tubes of heat transfer fluid were presumed in the unit with different locations. The unit’s heat transfer behavior was assessed by studying the liquid fraction graphs, streamlines, and isotherm contours. Each of the design factors was divided into four levels. To better investigate the design space for the accounted five variables and four levels, an L16 orthogonal table was considered. Changing the location of tubes could change the melting rate by 28%. The best melting rate was 94% after four hours of charging. It was found that the tubes with close distance could overheat each other and reduce the total heat transfer. The study of isotherms and streamlines showed the general circulation of natural convection flows at the final stage of melting was the most crucial factor in the melting of top regions of the unit and reduces the charging time. Thus, particular attention to the tubes’ placement should be made so that the phase change material could be quickly melted at both ends of a unit.</jats:p

Thermal charging optimization of a wavy-shaped nano-enhanced thermal storage unit

Data Availability Statement: Data is contained within the article.Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. A wavy shape was used to enhance the thermal heat transfer in a shell-tube latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) unit. The thermal storage unit was filled with CuO–coconut oil nano-enhanced phase change material (NePCM). The enthalpy-porosity approach was employed to model the phase change heat transfer in the presence of natural convection effects in the molten NePCM. The finite element method was applied to integrate the governing equations for fluid motion and phase change heat transfer. The impact of wave amplitude and wave number of the heated tube, as well as the volume concertation of nanoparticles on the full-charging time of the LHTES unit, was addressed. The Taguchi optimization method was used to find an optimum design of the LHTES unit. The results showed that an increase in the volume fraction of nanoparticles reduces the charging time. Moreover, the waviness of the tube resists the natural convection flow circulation in the phase change domain and could increase the charging time.Funding: This research received no external funding

Effect of twisted fin array in a triple-tube latent heat storage system during the charging mode

Data Availability Statement: The data will be available on request.Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. This study aims to assess the effect of adding twisted fins in a triple-tube heat exchanger used for latent heat storage compared with using straight fins and no fins. In the proposed heat exchanger, phase change material (PCM) is placed between the middle annulus while hot water is passed in the inner tube and outer annulus in a counter-current direction, as a superior method to melt the PCM and store the thermal energy. The behavior of the system was assessed regarding the liquid fraction and temperature distributions as well as charging time and energy storage rate. The results indicate the advantages of adding twisted fins compared with those of using straight fins. The effect of several twisted fins was also studied to discover its effectiveness on the melting rate. The results demonstrate that deployment of four twisted fins reduced the melting time by 18% compared with using the same number of straight fins, and 25% compared with the no-fins case considering a similar PCM mass. Moreover, the melting time for the case of using four straight fins was 8.3% lower than that compared with the no-fins case. By raising the fins’ number from two to four and six, the heat storage rate rose 14.2% and 25.4%, respectively. This study presents the effects of novel configurations of fins in PCM-based thermal energy storage to deliver innovative products toward commercialization, which can be manufactured with additive manufacturing.Funding: This research received no external funding

Solidification enhancement in a multi-tube latent heat storage system for efficient and economical production: Effect of number, position and temperature of the tubes

Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Thermal energy storage is an important component in energy units to decrease the gap between energy supply and demand. Free convection and the locations of the tubes carrying the heat-transfer fluid (HTF) have a significant influence on both the energy discharging potential and the buoyancy effect during the solidification mode. In the present study, the impact of the tube position was examined during the discharging process. Liquid-fraction evolution and energy removal rate with thermo-fluid contour profiles were used to examine the performance of the unit. Heat exchanger tubes are proposed with different numbers and positions in the unit for various cases including uniform and non-uniform tubes distribution. The results show that moving the HTF tubes to medium positions along the vertical direction is relatively better for enhancing the solidification of PCM with multiple HTF tubes. Repositioning of the HTF tubes on the left side of the unit can slightly improve the heat removal rate by about 0.2 in the case of p5-u-1 and decreases by 1.6% in the case of p5-u-2. It was found also that increasing the distance between the tubes in the vertical direction has a detrimental effect on the PCM solidification mode. Replacing the HTF tubes on the left side of the unit negatively reduces the heat removal rate by about 1.2 and 4.4%, respectively. Further, decreasing the HTF temperature from 15◦C to 10 and 5◦C can increase the heat removal rate by around 7 and 16%, respectively. This paper indicates that the specific concern to the HTF tube arrangement should be made to improve the discharging process attending free convection impact in phase change heat storage

Natural Convection Effect on Solidification Enhancement in a Multi-Tube Latent Heat Storage System: Effect of Tubes’ Arrangement

Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. The solidification process in a multi-tube latent heat energy system is affected by the natural convection and the arrangement of heat exchanger tubes, which changes the buoyancy effect as well. In the current work, the effect of the arrangement of the tubes in a multi-tube heat exchanger was examined during the solidification process with the focus on the natural convection effects inside the phase change material (PCM). The behavior of the system was numerically analyzed using liquid fraction and energy released, as well as temperature, velocity and streamline profiles for different studied cases. The arrangement of the tubes, considering seven pipes in the symmetrical condition, are assumed at different positions in the system, including uniform distribution of the tubes as well as non-uniform distribution, i.e., tubes concentrated at the bottom, middle and the top of the PCM shell. The model was first validated compared with previous experimental work from the literature. The results show that the heat rate removal from the PCM after 16 h was 52.89 W (max) and 14.85 W (min) for the cases of uniform tube distribution and tubes concentrated at the bottom, respectively, for the proposed dimensions of the heat exchanger. The heat rate removal of the system with uniform tube distribution increases when the distance between the tubes and top of the shell reduces, and increased equal to 68.75 W due to natural convection effect. The heat release rate also reduces by increasing the temperature the tubes. The heat removal rate increases by 7.5%, and 23.7% when the temperature increases from 10 °C to 15 °C and 20 °C, respectively. This paper reveals that specific consideration to the arrangement of the tubes should be made to enhance the heat recovery process attending natural convection effects in phase change heat storage systems

Intensifying the charging response of a phase-change material with twisted fin arrays in a shell-and-tube storage system

Data Availability Statement: Data is contained within the article.Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. A twisted-fin array as an innovative structure for intensifying the charging response of a phase-change material (PCM) within a shell-and-tube storage system is introduced in this work. A three-dimensional model describing the thermal management with charging phase change process in PCM was developed and numerically analyzed by the enthalpy-porosity method using commercial CFD software. Efficacy of the proposed structure of fins for performing better heat communication between the active heating surface and the adjacent layers of PCM was verified via comparing with conventional longitudinal fins within the same design limitations of fin material and volume usage. Optimization of the fin geometric parameters including the pitch, number, thickness, and the height of the twisted fins for superior performance of the proposed fin structure, was also introduced via the Taguchi method. The results show that a faster charging rate, higher storage rate, and better uniformity in temperature distribution could be achieved in the PCMs with Twisted fins. Based on the design of twisted fins, it was found that the energy charging time could be reduced by up to 42%, and the energy storage rate could be enhanced up to 63% compared to the reference case of straight longitudinal fins within the same PCM mass limitations.Funding: This research received no external funding

Investigation of heat transfer enhancement in a triple tube latent heat storage system using circular fins with inline and staggered arrangements

Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Inherent fluctuations in the availability of energy from renewables, particularly solar, remain a substantial impediment to their widespread deployment worldwide. Employing phasechange materials (PCMs) as media, saving energy for later consumption, offers a promising solution for overcoming the problem. However, the heat conductivities of most PCMs are limited, which severely limits the energy storage potential of these materials. This study suggests employing circular fins with staggered distribution to achieve improved thermal response rates of PCM in a vertical triple-tube heat exchanger involving two opposite flow streams of the heat-transfer fluid (HTF). Since heat diffusion is not the same at various portions of the PCM unit, different fin configurations, fin dimensions and HTF flow boundary conditions were explored using computational studies of melting in the PCM triple-tube system. Staggered configuration of fin distribution resulted in significant increases in the rates of PCM melting. The results indicate that the melting rate and heat charging rate could be increased by 37.2 and 59.1%, respectively, in the case of staggered distribution. Furthermore, the use of lengthy fins with smaller thickness in the vertical direction of the storage unit resulted in a better positive role of natural convection; thus, faster melting rates were achieved. With fin dimensions of 0.666 mm × 15 mm, the melting rate was found to be increased by 23.6%, when compared to the base case of 2 mm × 5 mm. Finally, it was confirmed that the values of the Reynolds number and inlet temperatures of the HTF had a significant impact on melting time savings when circular fins of staggered distribution were included