Volume 4: Innovative Solutions for Energy Transitions: Part III

Exergetic Analysis of Thermal Transport in Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage Systems Infused With Metal Foam Varun Joshi*, Manish K. Rathod

Abstract

A thermal performance of the metal foam-PCM composite (MFPC) infused latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) systems are widely evaluated based on the first law of thermodynamics. The thermal performance of such system is, therefore, investigated using the first and second law of thermodynamics during the melting process in a present study. The influence of metal foam porosity on thermal transport is analyzed. Results show that the phase change thermal transport can be improved substantially with an incorporation of the metal foam (? = 0.97) with the reduction in the melting time by 40% when compared to the pure PCM. A reduction in porosity of metal foam attenuates the high temperature gradients and hence, the entropy generation rate/irreversibility. Subsequently, the steady state exergetic efficiency is found to be 89.20% and 97.87% for the pure PCM and the MFPC respectively.

Keywords Latent heat thermal energy storage system, Metal foam-PCM composite, Entropy generation number, Exergy efficiency