Combined effect of using porous media and nano-particle on melting performance of PCM filled enclosure with triangular double fins
Shubo Chen, S. Saleem, Mohammed N. Alghamdi, Kottakkaran Sooppy Nisar, Akbar Arsalanloo, Alibek Issakhov, Weifeng Xia
Abstract
In the present study, a vertically oriented rectangular-shaped enclosure with triangular shaped double fins filled with PCM was considered as a Latent Thermal Energy Storage (LTES) system. Nine different cases including one pure PCM, three nano-PCM (having different volume fractions), two porous-PCM (having different porosity values) and three nano/porous PCM were considered to conduct the investigation. The PCM material employed for investigations was lauric acid. The copper made porous media was assumed to have porosity values of 98% and 95%. The Al2O3 nano-particles with the volume fractions of 1%, 2% and 4% combined with Lauric acid were considered as nano-PCM. The results presented that the cases with nanoparticles volume fractions of 1% and 2% could improve the melting performance. However, the case with nanoparticle volume fraction of 4% deteriorated the melting performance. In the cases with individual usage of nano-PCM the best case was related to the case with the volume fraction of 1% and resulted in about 184s time-saving. It was found that individual usage of porous media could significantly improve the melting performance; however, adding nanoparticles to the cases with porous media, regardless of volume fraction of nanoparticles deteriorates the melting performance of PCM enclosure.