On the Thermal Hysteresis Behavior of Encapsulated Latent Heat Storage with Various Geometry

Abstract

In this work, thermal hysteresis of PCM inside different encapsulated configuration (circle, triangle and square) during melting and solidification processes are investigated numerically. Charging and discharging of a latent heat storage during unsteady complex phenomena was simulated numerically using finite element method. The results indicate that time elapsed was minimum for triangular encapsulated configuration and maximum time for circular encapsulated configuration for both melting and solidification process. The time of thermal hysteresis of melting and solidification process decreased with the increasing Ryleigh number for all encapsulated configuration. Circular encapsulated configuration having higher latent heat storage than triangular and square encapsulated configurations, while circular encapsulated configuration has minimum.