Investigations on Particles Dispersed Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage System for Solar Water Heaters

Abstract

The enormous potential of solar energy has made it very attractive for space newlineheating/cooling, green house heating, cooking, hot water production, etc. Due to time newlinegap between availability of solar energy and need, energy storage is emphasized to newlineensure continuous and efficient supply. Phase change material (PCM) based latent newlineheat thermal storage (LHTS) systems offer a challenging option to be employed as an newlineeffective energy storage and retrieval device. Although LHTS systems offer high newlineenergy density and transfer energy under isothermal conditions, the poor thermal newlineconductivity (usually 0.1-0.6 W/m.K) of PCMs drastically affects the thermal newlineperformance of the systems, which in turn limits their practical application. This newlinenecessitates the employment of performance enhancement techniques for LHTS newlinesystem. The addition of high conductivity particles is proposed as one of the newlinepromising performance enhancement techniques for LHTS. newlineThe purpose of the present study is to investigate the performance newlineenhancement of a shell and tube storage unit applicable to solar water heaters due to the addition of two versions of high conductivity particles, i.e. nano size and micro size copper particles. newlineThe identified PCMs were paraffin wax, from organic group and hydrated salt, from inorganic group.