2020 Volume 60 Issue 10 Pages 2157-2164
Phase change materials (PCM) have great application potential in the field of thermal energy storage (TES). However, most PCM have low thermal conductivity, which limits the TES efficiency. In this paper, a novel method employing oscillating heat pipe (OHP) to enhance the heat transfer performance of latent heat TES system was investigated. OHPs with different turns, inner dimeters and wall thickness were designed, manufactured and tested. Thermal performance of TES system enhanced by embedded OHPs were tested. The influence of turn number, inner dimeters and wall thickness of OHPs on the heat transfer performance of paraffin were investigated. The results show that the prepared OHPs have high heat transfer performance. The time of the thermal storage process for the paraffin based TES coupled with OHP (Di=3 mm, Do=4 mm, 4 turns) is 38.45% shorter than that without OHP. Therefore, the OHPs can effectively improve the heat transfer rate inside paraffin in the thermal storage process.
