The use of a latent heat storage system using phase change materials (PCMs) is an effective way of storing thermal energy and has the advantages of high-energy storage density and the isothermal nature of the storage process. PCMs have been widely used in latent heat thermal-storage systems for heat pumps, solar engineering, and spacecraft thermal control applications. The uses of PCMs for heating and cooling applications for buildings have been investigated within the past decade. There are large numbers of PCMs that melt and solidify at a wide range of temperatures, making them attractive in a number of applications. This paper also summarizes the investigation and analysis of the available thermal energy storage systems incorporating PCMs for use in different applications.

Review on thermal energy storage with phase change materials and applications

Reference LPI-ARTICLE-1999-017View record in Web of Science Record created on 2006-02-21, modified on 2017-05-12

/pdf/metal-oxide-surfaces-and-their-interactions-with-aqueous-22jt31pax0.pdf

Metal Oxide Surfaces and Their Interactions with Aqueous Solutions and Microbial Organisms.

Introduction to Computational Fluid Dynamics is a textbook for advanced undergraduate and first year graduate students in mechanical, aerospace and chemical engineering. The book emphasizes understanding CFD through physical principles and examples. The author follows a consistent philosophy of control volume formulation of the fundamental laws of fluid motion and energy transfer, and introduces a novel notion of 'smoothing pressure correction' for solution of flow equations on collocated grids within the framework of the well-known SIMPLE algorithm. The subject matter is developed by considering pure conduction/diffusion, convective transport in 2-dimensional boundary layers and in fully elliptic flow situations and phase-change problems in succession. The book includes chapters on discretization of equations for transport of mass, momentum and energy on Cartesian, structured curvilinear and unstructured meshes, solution of discretised equations, numerical grid generation and convergence enhancement. Practising engineers will find this particularly useful for reference and for continuing education.

/pdf/introduction-to-computational-fluid-dynamics-51r4roizi0.pdf

Introduction to Computational Fluid Dynamics

Review of passive PCM latent heat thermal energy storage systems towards buildings’ energy efficiency

Energy storage components improve the energy efficiency of systems by reducing the mismatch between supply and demand. For this purpose, phase-change materials are particularly attractive since they provide a high-energy storage density at a constant temperature which corresponds to the phase transition temperature of the material. Nevertheless, the incorporation of phase-change materials (PCMs) in a particular application calls for an analysis that will enable the researcher to optimize performances of systems. Due to the non-linear nature of the problem, numerical analysis is generally required to obtain appropriate solutions for the thermal behavior of systems. Therefore, a large amount of research has been carried out on PCMs behavior predictions. The review will present models based on the first law and on the second law of thermodynamics. It shows selected results for several configurations, from numerous authors so as to enable one to start his/her research with an exhaustive overview of the subject. This overview stresses the need to match experimental investigations with recent numerical analyses since in recent years, models mostly rely on other models in their validation stages.

A review on phase-change materials: Mathematical modeling and simulations

After a brief review of current source-based methods for modeling solidification phase change systems, a new source-based method for the treatment of latent heat evolution is presented. The essential feature of the proposed method is linearization of the discretized source term. This results in a robust and accurate computational method that can deal efficiently with a wide range of latent heat evolution mechanisms (i.e., liquid fraction temperature relationships). The proposed method is illustrated on application to a test problem in which various liquid fraction temperature relationships are employed.

Eral source-based method for solidification phase change

SUMMARY The aim of this paper is to categorize the major fixed grid formulations and solution methods for conduction controlled phase change problems. Using a two phase model of. a solid/liquid phase change, the basic enthalpy equation is derived. Starting from this equation, a number of alternative formulations are obtained. All the formulations are reduced to a standard form. From this standard form, finite element and finite volume discretizations are developed. These discretizations are used as the basis for a number of fixed grid numerical solution techniques for solidification phase change systems. In particular, various apparent capacity and source based enthalpy methods are explored.

Fixed grid techniques for phase change problems: A review

In the present work, a general implicit source-based enthalpy method is presented for the analysis of solidification systems. The proposed approach is both robust and efficient. The performance of the method is illustrated by application to a number of problems taken from recent metallurgical literature.

A general enthalpy method for modeling solidification processes

Two common fixed grid enthalpy methods used in the numerical modelling of phase change problems are the apparent heat capacity and the source based methods. In this paper, a general enthalpy method that includes as subsets both apparent heat capacity and source based methods, is derived. Following this, an optimal enthalpy scheme is identified. The superiority of the optimal scheme over the apparent heat capacity and the source based schemes is illustrated by solving sample phase change problems.

C. R. Swaminathan

Papers

Eral source-based method for solidification phase change

Fixed grid techniques for phase change problems: A review

A general enthalpy method for modeling solidification processes

On the enthalpy method

Towards a general numerical scheme for solidification systems