Thermal Energy Storage Using Horizontal Shell-Tube Heat Exchanger: Numerical Investigation on Temperature Variation of HTF

Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage (LHTES) is a method to store thermal energy in a Phase Change Material (PCM). Due to the higher energy density, the efficiency of the size of the container might happen. However, the thermal energy storing (charging) time on LHTES is considerably inefficient. The increasing velocity of HTF was conducted using a modified fin and encapsulation to improve the charging time. Similarly, with this motivation, numerical analysis with modified density modelling was conducted to investigate the effect of temperature of heat transfer fluid (HTF) on PCM. This investigation was validated with shell-tube geometry experiment. The experiment set-up was divided into two parts where shell part used as circulation of Heat Transfer Fluid (HTF) and tube part containing PCM (RT-52). This simulation carried out using ANSYS FLUENT 17 to observe evolution on radial-axial temperature, melting time, melting contour and natural convection as the effect of HTF temperature variation. The natural convection got higher and induced the circulation in tube as well. Thus, the melting area was much more at the top cylinder. Melting time decreased significantly as the rising of HTF temperature.