Thermal Characterization of a Heat Management Module Containing Microencapsulated Phase Change Material

Abstract

In this study, a heat management module containing a microencapsulated phase change material (mPCM) was fabricated from mPCM (core material: paraffin; melting temperature: 37 °C) and aluminum honeycomb structures (8 mm core cell). The aluminum honeycomb functioned both as structural support and as a heat transfer channel. The thermal management performance of the proposed module under constant-temperature boundary conditions was investigated experimentally. The thermal protection period of the module decreased as the Stefan number increased; however, increasing the subcooling factor could effectively enhance the thermal protection performance. When the cold-wall temperature TC was fixed at 17 °C and the initial hot wall temperature was 47–67 °C, the heat dissipation of the module was complete 140 min after the hot-wall heat supply was stopped. The time required to complete the heat dissipation increased to 280 min when TC increased to 27 °C.

Optimization of Hexagonal Structure for Enhancing Heat Transfer in Storage System

“…A honeycomb sample (10 cm × 10 cm × 2.54 cm, core cell 8 mm) was tested experimentally in terms of thermal performance in PV panels providing sufficient heat conduction enhancement and unifying the interior temperatures of the module with no thermal stratification [ 19 ]. A subsequent study on mPCMs by similar authors confirmed the benefit of Al honeycomb working as a structural support and heat transfer channel facilitating thermal energy dissipation [ 20 ]. Another study reported an investigation of the effect of honeycomb core on latent heat storage (LHS) in PCM solar air heater (SAH).…”