Solidification Modeling of Energy Storage Materials In a Packed Bed Containing Spherical Capsules

Phase change materials (PCMs) can be used as a heat and cold storage medium and the stored energy can be used in the vast applications. PCMs are encapsulated in the different geometries and spherical geometry is an important and usual kind of encapsulation. In this research modeling of the cold storage in a packed bed, in order to use as air conditioning, has been carried out. For this aim the packed bed has been filled by spherical capsules containing water as energy storage material and air has been selected as the coolant. Energy balance under unsteady state conditions on the air and water in a differential control volume has been carried out and through solving the derived partial differential equations by finite element method, temperature distribution along the packed bed was obtained. The model predictions have been compared with the experimental data and after validation, effect of the important parameters such as coolant velocity, capsule diameter, inlet coolant temperature and initial temperature of the PCM on the performance of the bed have been investigated

کلیدواژه ها:

Packed bed ، PCM ، air conditioning ، modeling ، water ، spherical capsules