A NUMERICAL STUDY ON THE THERMAL STORAGE PROPERTIES OF PACKER BED UNDER DIFFERENT ARRANGEMENTS OF PHASE CHANGE MATERIAL CAPSULES

To evaluate the thermal storage properties of packer bed under different ar-rangements o phase change material capsules, three packing models (strip pack -ing model, in-line packing model and disordered packing model) are developed. The index of thermal storage properties for packer bed such as exergy efficiency, energy efficiency, pressure drop, charging time, temperature uniformity, and thermal storage capacity is studied. The results show that the uniformity of the temperature field of the orderly packing model is obviously better than that of the disorderly ones. In addition, the in-line packing model has obvious advantages on the energy efficiency and the thermal storage capacity compared with the strip packing model. The strip packing model has the highest exergy efficiency, but it has a high pressure drop.