CFD ANALYSIS FOR HEAT TRANSFER BETWEEN COPPER ENCAPSULATED PHASE CHANGE MATERIAL AND HEAT TRANSFER FLUID

Heat transfer plays an important role in the enhancement of thermal energy storage in phase change material (PCM). The effective utilization of solar thermal energy can be obtained by proper storage of that energy. There are various techniques for the enhancement solar thermal storage in phase change material such as introductionof wire brushes, honey comb structure, fins and packed bed storage. In this study the analysis of heat transfer between PCM and heat transfer fluids (HTF) with Spherical and cylindrical finned encapsulations made of copper are done using computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis software GAMBIT and Fluent 6.2. The analysis is done in two modes as charging and discharging. During the charging mode the input is given in terms of temperature to the heat transfer fluid and the amount of heat transfer inside the PCM encapsulation is taken as output. During the discharging process the output temperature in the PCM is given as input and the amount of heat transferred to the heat transfer fluid is noted. The results from CFD analysis conclude that the heat transfer is more in finned encapsulations than that of without finned encapsulations and the copper sphere with fins is considered to be the best out of all other encapsulations.