Investigations on Phase Change Materials for Thermal Energy Storage (TES) System for Low-Temperature Steam Applications

Abstract

Phase Change Materials (PCM) exhibit a thermal storage property by their latent heat of fusion. These PCMs absorb heat energy from the source and they undergo a change of phase and release the stored heat energy to the application when required. This research work focuses on utilizing this property of PCMs to store heat energy from a steam source from a Parabolic Trough Collector, and the output from such a Thermal Energy Storage Unit could be used for steam cooking. This research work selects the optimum Phase Change Material to suit the heating application and virtually simulates the performance of various configurations of Thermal Storage heat exchangers and finds the optimum number of passes for steam flow using the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach.