Volume 2: Innovative Solutions for Energy Transitions: Part I

Numerical Study on the Melting Performance of a Thermal Energy Storage Tube Filled With Metal Foam Xiaohu Yang*, Zhaoyang Niu, Hailong Li, Ya-Ling He

Abstract

Thermal energy storage has been attracting more and more attentions due mainly to its distinctive features on peak-load shifting capability for systems with renewable energy involved. To further improve the overall thermal efficiency for charging/discharging processes, heat transfer techniques to enhance phase change heat transfer are typically employed. This paper introduced a novel concept of partially-filling ratio of metal foam into PCM. The melting heat transfer can be expected to be further enhanced with partially filled metal foams. To this aim, an axisymmetric twodimensional computational model was established. A series of numerical simulations were carried out to study the effect of filling ratio of metal foam on the melting performance of a TES tube. Good agreement was achieved through the comparison of temperatures obtained from simulation and experimental measurements. Based on the results, it can be concluded as follows: if the goal was to enhance heat transfer simultaneously to save material cost, the suggested filling ratio was 0.90; if saving material cost was the aim, the filling ratio can be further reduced to 0.85. The proposed novel TES unit with partially-filled metal foam outperformed other competing heat transfer techniques, favoring a progressive potential in thermal energy storage applications.

Keywords thermal energy storage, partially filling, porous media, numerical simulation, filling ratio