Numerical study on melting process of Phase Change Material as thermal energy storage

Abstract

The use of phase change material (PCM) as thermal energy storage is increasingly in demand. This is because PCM has high storage capacity. Thermal energy can be stored, not only as sensible heat, but also in the form of latent heat. A model for investigating the melting process of paraffin wax which is used as thermal energy storage, was developed in the ANSYS FLUENT simulation software environment, then the results were analyzed and compared with the results of previous experiments. The simulation results show that the melting process occurs relatively faster than the melting process in the actual experiment, due to the construction of the paraffin wax container. Also due to the construction of a cube-shaped paraffin wax container, paraffin wax remains in the lower right corner of the container. The effect of placing thermocouples in paraffin wax container, which when compared to the relatively small size of the container, can be significant. This certainly needs further investigation. The choice of heat source and how to keep its temperature constant in experiment need also to be investigated further. Based on the results obtained through this study, the use of PCM as cold storage in solar photovoltaic air conditioning system is worth considering, as thermal backup or even tosubstitute the battery storage system that has been used all this time.