Utilizing phase change materials in thermal energy storage systems is commonly considered as an alternative solution for the effective use of energy. This study presents numerical simulations of the charging process for a multitube latent heat thermal energy storage system. A thermal energy storage model, consisting of five tubes of heat transfer fluids, was investigated using Rubitherm phase change material (RT35) as the. The locations of the tubes were optimized by applying the Taguchi method. The thermal behavior of the unit was evaluated by considering the liquid fraction graphs, streamlines, and isotherm contours. The numerical model was first verified compared with existed experimental data from the literature. The outcomes revealed that based on the Taguchi method, the first row of the heat transfer fluid tubes should be located at the lowest possible area while the other tubes should be spread consistently in the enclosure. The charging rate changed by 76% when varying the locations of the tubes in the enclosure to the optimum point. The development of streamlines and free-convection flow circulation was found to impact the system design significantly. The Taguchi method could efficiently assign the optimum design of the system with few simulations. Accordingly, this approach gives the impression of the future design of energy storage systems.
The two-dimensional transient heat conduction through a thermal insulation of temperature dependent thermal properties is investigated numerically using the FVM. It is assumed that this insulating material is initially at a uniform temperature. Then, it is suddenly subjected at its inner surface with a step change in temperature and subjected at its outer surface with a natural convection boundary condition associated with a periodic change in ambient temperature and heat flux of solar radiation. Two thermal insulation materials were selected. The fully implicit time scheme is selected to represent the time discretization. The arithmetic mean thermal conductivity is chosen to be the value of the approximated thermal conductivity at the i
... Show MoreEnhancement of heat transfer in the tube heat exchanger is studied experimentally by using discrete twisted tapes. Three different positions were selected for inserting turbulators along tube section (horizontal position by α= 00, inclined position by α= 45 0 and vertical position by α= 900). The space between turbulators was fixed by distributing 5 pieces of these turbulators with pitch ratio PR = (0.44). Also, the factor of constant heat flux was applied as a boundary condition around the tube test section for all experiments of this investigation, while the flow rates were selected as a variable factor (Reynolds number values vary from 5000 to 15000). The results s
... Show MoreThe enhancement of heat exchanger performance was investigated using dimpled tubes tested at different Reynolds numbers, in the present work four types of dimpled tubes with a specified configuration manufactured, tested and then compared performance with the smooth tube and other passive techniques performance. Two dimpled arrangements along the tube were investigated, these are inline and staggered at constant pitch ratio X/d=4, the test results showed that Nusselts number (heat transfer) of the staggered array is higher than the inline array by 13%. The effect of different depths of the dimple (14.5 mm and 18.5 mm) has been also investigated; a tube with large dimple diameter enhanced the Nusselts number by about 25% for the ran
... Show MoreThis paper presents a numerical solution to the inverse problem consisting of recovering time-dependent thermal conductivity and heat source coefficients in the one-dimensional parabolic heat equation. This mathematical formulation ensures that the inverse problem has a unique solution. However, the problem is still ill-posed since small errors in the input data lead to a drastic amount of errors in the output coefficients. The finite difference method with the Crank-Nicolson scheme is adopted as a direct solver of the problem in a fixed domain. The inverse problem is solved sub
... Show MoreA free convective heat transfer from the inside surface of a uniformly heated vertical circular tube has been experimentally investigated under a constant wall heat flux boundary condition for laminar air flow in the ranges of RaL from 6.9108 to 5109. The effect of the different sections (restrictions) lengths placed at the exit of the heated tube on the surface temperature distribution, the local and average heat transfer coefficients were examined. The experimental apparatus consists of aluminum circular tube with 900 mm length and 30 mm inside diameter (L/D=30). The exit sections (restrictions) were included circular tubes having the same inside diameter as the heated tube but with different lengths of
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