Numerical study of melting and solidification behavior of radial and linear cascaded metal foam latent heat storage shell and tube heat exchanger

Due to high energy storage capacity, phase change materials (PCMs) are used widely to store thermal energy. But the poor thermal conductivity limits their usage for thermal transport applications. A promising technique for overcoming this problem is the use of metal foam. In the present work, the effective thermal conductivity of PCM is enhanced using copper metal foam (MF). The copper MF of porosities 0.93, 0.95, and 0.97 are used. A 3D numerical analysis is carried out considering the effect of MF's radial and linear cascaded arrangement in the PCM shell and tube heat exchanger (HX) during melting and solidification. A comparison of the HX performance is made by analyzing phase change time, energy stored, energy released, and exergy efficiency during the melting and solidification of PCM. PCM and MF interaction is modeled using a non-thermal equilibrium model. HX with radially cascaded MF with a porosity sequence of 0.93–0.95–0.97 from tube to shell has shown better performance among all the selected configurations.