Performance Evaluation of a Thermal Energy Storage System with Stainless Steel Encapsulated Phase Change Material

The packed bed latent heat storage system has drawn much interest because of its favorable application potential and inexpensive investment costs. The development of mathematical models and the structural optimization of the thermal energy storage (TES) tank were the main focuses of earlier research on this technology. There was not much experimental research on this kind of system's thermal performances at medium temperature ranges. This study uses a detailed thermal performance analysis of phase change material (PCM)-based energy calculations. Experiments were conducted on stainless steel encapsulations without fins and stainless steel encapsulations with solid internal fins for the mass flow rates of 2, 4, and 6 L/min with a heating source of constant temperature bath. Water and paraffin wax was used as the heat transfer fluid and phase change material. The charging duration of PCM revealed a desire to increase the heat exchange surface to increase the heat exchange power. The stratification performance of the storage tank was also analyzed for this study. Increasing the encapsulation material's heat transfer surface reduces the charge duration and improves the system's thermal performance.