Phase Change Materials to Meet Domestic Hot Water Demand in the UK - A Numerical Study

Abstract

-This paper presents a performance evaluation of two buffer tanks for a domestic heating system that replaces conventional boilers with air source heat pumps (ASHP). One of the buffer tanks consisted of packed bed with encapsulated PCM spheres compared to the same thermal storage capacity over the temperature range of 40 to 65°C using only water. The simulations predicted a potential CO2 reduction of 11% for the packed bed and 2% for the water only store, when operating the heat pump using the economy 10 electricity tariff i.e a low tariff between 00.00-05.00 and 13.00-16.00 with current grid emission values; successfully offsetting the electrical load to meet the required heat demand.