Experimental Investigation of Phase Change Phenomena of Paraffin Wax inside a Capsule

The study of melting phenomena of Phase Change Material (PCM) needs to be understood for the design of thermal storage systems. The constrained and unconstrained melting of PCM inside a spherical capsule using paraffin wax (PW) is investigated. The experiments are carried out with different HTFtemperatures of 62°C, 70°C, 75°C and 80°C. PCM melting is constrained in spherical capsule using thermocouples used to measure the temperatures in capsule. The visualization of melting process is obtained using digital camera. The qualitative and quantitative information on solid-liquid interface of phase change process is compared. It is observed that, the solid PCM is restricted from sinking to the bottom of the spherical capsule in constrained melting. The objective of this paper is to confirm suitability of PW for enhancing the performance of thermal storage capacity and utilizing PW for domestic solar water heating applications