Analysis of the influence of operating conditions and geometric parameters on heat transfer in water-paraffin shell-and-tube latent thermal energy storage unit

A transient heat transfer phenomenon during charging and discharging of the shell-and-tube latent thermal energy storage system has been analysed in this paper. The mathematical model, regarding the conjugate problem of transient forced convection and solid-liquid phase change heat transfer based on the enthalpy formulation, has been presented. A fully implicit two-dimensional control volume FORTRAN computer code has been developed for solving governing equations with initial and boundary conditions. The numerical model is validated with experimental data obtained by experimental investigations that have been performed on the test unit with technical grade paraffin as the phase change material (PCM) and water as the heat transfer fluid (HTF). Numerical predictions match the experimental results. This pointed out that the presented numerical procedure could be accurately used for transient heat transfer simulation. A series of numerical calculations have been done in order to analyse the influence of several HTF operating conditions and several geometric parameters on the heat transfer process inside the water-paraffin shell-and-tube latent thermal energy storage (LTES) unit. Numerical results, which could be used for operating conditions and geometry optimization, provide guidelines for the design of the latent thermal energy storage system. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.