Experimental and numerical study on the thermal behavior of phase change material infiltrated in low porosity metal foam

In this paper, a comprehensive experimental and numerical investigation is conducted to study the thermal behavior of phase change material (PCM) infiltrated in low porosity metal foam (LPMF). A visible experiment is designed to trace the temperature field and solid-liquid melting evolvement of PCM with and without metal foam. The experimental method and pore-scale numerical simulation are employed to extract temperature histories at different location during the melting process. Besides, the effective thermal conductivity of composite PCM is calculated by numerical simulation and compared with the theoretical models. Experimental results indicate that the thermal behavior of PCM can be visibly enhanced by embedding LPMF, e.g., by comparing with pure paraffin, the melting time of composite PCM is reduced by 45% and the maximum temperature difference is decreased by 83.3%. The porosity has influences on the thermal characteristics of composite PCMs. Numerical results exhibit good agreement with experimental data, which indicates that modified Kelvin model can be employed to predict the thermal performance of composite PCM. Also it can be found from numerical results that effective thermal conductivities of composite PCMs are distinctly heightened, e.g., the effective thermal conductivities of composite PCM with 67% porosity is about 108 times as much as that of paraffin. Numerical model is of great significance for study and design of thermal management system using composite PCM.