Paraffin wax is a perfect phase change material(PCM)that can be used in latent heat storage units(LHSUs).The utilization of such LHSU is restricted by the poor conductivity of PCM.In the present work,a metal foam made...Paraffin wax is a perfect phase change material(PCM)that can be used in latent heat storage units(LHSUs).The utilization of such LHSU is restricted by the poor conductivity of PCM.In the present work,a metal foam made of aluminium with PCM was used to produce a composite PCM as a thermal conductivity technique in PCM⁃LHSU and water was used as heat transfer fluid(HTF).An experimental investigation was carried out to evaluate the heat transfer characteristics of LHSU using pure PCM and composite PCM.The study included time⁃dependent visualization of the PCM during the melting and solidification processes.Besides,a thermocouple network was placed inside the heat storage to record the temperature profile during each process.Results showed that better performance could be obtained using composite PCM⁃LHSU for both melting and solidification processes.The melting time of composite PCM⁃LHSU was about 83%faster than that of a simple PCM⁃LHSU,and the percentage decreasing in the solidification time was about 85%due to the provision of metal foam.展开更多
In this paper,CPCM(Composite Phase Change Material)was manufactured with metal foam matrix used as filling material.The temperature curves were obtained by experiment.The performance of heat transfer was analyzed.The ...In this paper,CPCM(Composite Phase Change Material)was manufactured with metal foam matrix used as filling material.The temperature curves were obtained by experiment.The performance of heat transfer was analyzed.The experimental results show that metal foam matrix can improve temperature uniformity in phase change thermal storage material and enhance heat conduction ability.The thermal performance of CPCM is significantly improved.The efficiency of temperature control can be obviously improved by adding metal foam in phase change material.CPCM is in solid-liquid two-phase region when temperature is close to phase change point of paraffin.An approximate plateau appears.The plateau can be considered as the temperature control zone of CPCM.Heat can be transferred fiom hot source and be uniformly spread in thermal storage material by using metal foam matrix since thermal storage material has the advantage of strong heat storage capacity and disadvantage of poor heat conduction ability.Natural convection promotes the melting of solid-liquid phase change material.Good thermal conductivity of foam metal accelerates heat conduction of solid-liquid phase change material.The interior temperature difference decreases and the whole temperature becomes more uniform.For the same porosity with a metal foam,melting time of solid-liquid phase change material decreases.Heat conduction is enhanced and natural convection is suppressed when pore size of metal foam is smaller.The thermal storage time decreases and heat absorption rate increases when the pore size of metal foam reduces.The research results can be used to guide fabricating the CPCM.展开更多
文摘Paraffin wax is a perfect phase change material(PCM)that can be used in latent heat storage units(LHSUs).The utilization of such LHSU is restricted by the poor conductivity of PCM.In the present work,a metal foam made of aluminium with PCM was used to produce a composite PCM as a thermal conductivity technique in PCM⁃LHSU and water was used as heat transfer fluid(HTF).An experimental investigation was carried out to evaluate the heat transfer characteristics of LHSU using pure PCM and composite PCM.The study included time⁃dependent visualization of the PCM during the melting and solidification processes.Besides,a thermocouple network was placed inside the heat storage to record the temperature profile during each process.Results showed that better performance could be obtained using composite PCM⁃LHSU for both melting and solidification processes.The melting time of composite PCM⁃LHSU was about 83%faster than that of a simple PCM⁃LHSU,and the percentage decreasing in the solidification time was about 85%due to the provision of metal foam.
基金Support provided by National Basic Research Program of China(Grant No.2012CB933200)National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No:51161140332,Grant No.51476172)
文摘In this paper,CPCM(Composite Phase Change Material)was manufactured with metal foam matrix used as filling material.The temperature curves were obtained by experiment.The performance of heat transfer was analyzed.The experimental results show that metal foam matrix can improve temperature uniformity in phase change thermal storage material and enhance heat conduction ability.The thermal performance of CPCM is significantly improved.The efficiency of temperature control can be obviously improved by adding metal foam in phase change material.CPCM is in solid-liquid two-phase region when temperature is close to phase change point of paraffin.An approximate plateau appears.The plateau can be considered as the temperature control zone of CPCM.Heat can be transferred fiom hot source and be uniformly spread in thermal storage material by using metal foam matrix since thermal storage material has the advantage of strong heat storage capacity and disadvantage of poor heat conduction ability.Natural convection promotes the melting of solid-liquid phase change material.Good thermal conductivity of foam metal accelerates heat conduction of solid-liquid phase change material.The interior temperature difference decreases and the whole temperature becomes more uniform.For the same porosity with a metal foam,melting time of solid-liquid phase change material decreases.Heat conduction is enhanced and natural convection is suppressed when pore size of metal foam is smaller.The thermal storage time decreases and heat absorption rate increases when the pore size of metal foam reduces.The research results can be used to guide fabricating the CPCM.
