Computational Analysis of Sensible Energy Storage for Low-Temperature Application

Abstract

A computational model of regenerator-type sensible energy storage (SES) is developed for 1 MJ storage capacity for low-temperature application. Water and concrete are selected as the heat transfer fluid (HTF) and the material to store energy, respectively. Effects of tube diameter and pitch circle diameter (PCD) on the charging time, discharging time, charging efficiency, discharging efficiency are investigated in the present study. The software named COMSOL Multiphysics, works on finite element method (FEM), is used to carry out the computational work. The computational model is found to be well-matched with the available literature. The effective charging and discharging time decrease with the increasing tube diameter and PCD. The charging efficiencies with PCD 4 cm, 5 cm, and 6 cm are 0.75, 0.89, and 0.93, respectively and with 1.03, 1.37, and 1.71 cm tube diameter are 0.79, 0.89, and 0.93, respectively, at the effective charging time. Further, variations of discharging efficiencies are also investigated.